


Of Monsters and Men

by xXQueenofDragonsXx



Series: Walking With The Dead [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, BAMF Michonne (Walking Dead), Because Teddy's There, Beth Greene Lives, Blood Loss, Brother-Sister Relationships, Butterfly Effect, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abandonment, Childhood Trauma, Cute Teddy Lupin, Disabled Character, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Grady Memorial Hospital (Walking Dead), Growing Up, He honestly just ends up getting lost, He's a little shy at first, Loss of Limbs, Mother-Son Relationship, Not Epilogue Compliant, Other, POV Child, POV Teddy Lupin, Panic Attacks, Parent Michonne (Walking Dead), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Daryl Dixon, Protective Michonne (Walking Dead), Surprise Ending, Teddy Lupin is a little shit, Teddy Lupin needs a hug, Teddy's a sweetheart, Walker Immunity, Welsh Teddy Lupin, Will most likely have a sequel, because fuck Dawn, but it’s there - Freeform, but once he gets to know someone, he is a sassy motherfucker, it's really weird, its not really all that important, kind of, kind of?, no beta we die like men, she can go rot in hell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24691327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXQueenofDragonsXx/pseuds/xXQueenofDragonsXx
Summary: Raised by his beloved godfather and grandmother, Teddy Lupin was happy to say that he has had a wonderful childhood and was now one year away from going to Hogwarts.When his grandmother decides to take him to America, he doesn't know what to think. Then things happen and Teddy kind of ends up a little lost, that wouldn't be too much of a problem usually, but then the world kind sorta of ends, and now he's stuck in a tree while a horde of the dead people walk around eating people all around him with no way out. Now, he could just make a break for it and hope the dead guys don't catch up to him, but his foot is kind of broken so... yeah, he's not feeling very optimistic.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Teddy Lupin, Possible Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene, Rick Grimes/Michonne, Teddy Lupin & Beth Greene, Teddy Lupin & Maggie Greene, Teddy Lupin & Michonne, Teddy Lupin & Rick Grimes
Series: Walking With The Dead [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807747
Comments: 85
Kudos: 167





	1. Alone

Teddy Lupin was lost.

He didn't know where he took the wrong turn, but he did, and now he was lost. He shifted, glancing around nervously as his heartbeat quickened in his chest. All he knew was that he had just gone to the bathroom while his gran talked with one of her friends, and then when he came out, she was no longer there.

And now he was lost somewhere in bloody Georgia of all places, all alone with no way to possibly get back home to England.

Gran was going to be so mad at him for getting lost like this! Teddy could feel his face heat up, and his lips form into a quivering frown. His arms wound around his shivering form, tugging his jacket closer as icy droplets of rain began to fall, leaving the small ten-year-old soaked to the bone.

He stood in place for several minutes, glancing around at the quiet neighborhood he had started wandering around in hopes of spotting a glimpse of his grandmother. Or that friend she had been talking too. Either would be fine. He honestly just wanted someone to hug right now, thank you very much. 

He was cold, shivering, wet, and terrified. He wanted his gran, she would be safe and warm and kind. He needed his gran. He knew that most ten-year-olds would protest at being coddled by their grandmother, and in most cases, he would too. But right now, all he wanted was to run into gran's arms and never let go, his ten-year-old pride be damned.

He didn't want to move, he didn't want to go look because what if she came by? Harry always told him that if he ever got lost to stay in one place where he, Ginny, gran, or anyone he knew could find him. He had been told to not talk to strangers (not that there were any around) and to not wander off. He had tried to do that, but now he was stuck in the middle of a random neighborhood in the middle of the night with no clue about where to go, and it was so dark, and he was cold and wet, everything was icky, and he just wanted a hug.

He let out a tiny whimper, looking around in his little circle again, and then again, and then again. His little feet splashed into a puddle on the ground, getting his black sneakers all muddy and getting his legs even colder and wetter. His lip quivered, and he wiped at his eyes. He was ten for Merlin's sake, he was not going to cry. He just wanted to go home, he wanted to see his gran.

He didn't like this, not one bit. He didn't mean to get lost, and he was doing everything right! Stay still, don't talk to strangers, but it wasn't working!

Teddy didn't know how long he stood there for, his mind rolling over the thoughts streaming through his head again and again. Eventually, he let his arms fall back to his sides, shivering as cold winds bombarded the spot where his arms just were. It was so dark out, and he felt numb all over. Waiting wasn't working. If his gran was going to find him, she would've done it by now. 

Why hadn't she found him yet?

He rubbed at his eyes again, trying to stop the flow of icy tears that trailed down his reddening cheeks. Slowly, he began to walk forward, down the road into the direction that seemed the least scary. The sky above him was a cloudy grey dotted with the darkness of the night, and his eyes were getting heavier. His feet were aching from him continuing to stand, and he was so cold. He wanted his gran, he wanted Harry. But Harry was back in England right now, probably eating dinner with Ginny, James, Al, and newborn little Lily, and he had no clue where his gran was.

While he walked, he was careful not to wander into the road. There didn't seem to be any cars, but he didn't want to risk it. At one point, he slipped over a loose shoelace and had fallen into a puddle of rainwater. Every hair on his body stood on end, and he instantly cried out. Tears began blurring his vision, and he pulls himself to his feet, letting out another cry when his foot screamed in pain, and he fell backward again. 

He was lost, cold, wet, and now had probably broken his ankle. It was official, this was the worst day of his life, right up next to the day his parents had died. 

He didn't bother trying to get up again as he curled up into a ball and began to cry. He wanted his gran!

He didn't know how long he sat there crying. He might have been there for a few minutes or maybe an hour or two. But he wasn't totally out of his depth, so when a faint groan sounded from somewhere behind him, he heard it and quieted almost instantly. 

He wasn't sure if he heard it or not, so he held his breath and waited.

And then, he hears it again, and his head whips to one side towards where the park was located a few feet behind him. Teddy strains his ears, and it takes him a second, but he hears it again. Faint, and he probably wouldn't have even caught it if it weren't for his extra good hearing, courtesy of his father. But he hears it.

Twigs snapping: grass, dirt, and leaves crunching wetly underfoot.

Teddy's breath catches, and he tucks his knees against his chest, but otherwise stays still. His eyes were glued to the foliage of which the sound was coming from. The park wasn't all that far away from where he sat, just a little ways away from the sidewalk he was sitting on. And it wouldn't be the first time people have ventured in there, even at this hour.

_It's probably just someone taking a late-night walk,_ Teddy tells himself, but he doubts it severely. Who would come out in this weather willingly? Or maybe it's a drunk. Drunks could get violent, drunks could be armed. Drunks were dangerous, and he did not want to meet one.

It didn't matter anyway, because, whoever it was, they were getting closer. The footsteps were getting louder, as was their breathing. 

It... it sounds weird though, the breathing. There was something wrong with it. There was a hissing quality to it, like something you'd expect to hear out of the mouth of a snake. And tangled through the hissing sound is a strangled kind of moan, like someone in pain.

Something was wrong. Teddy places both his hands on the sidewalk beside him and pushes up, trying to bring himself to his feet. He fails miserably, falling back to the floor with a pained 'oof.'

There was a snarl, and Teddy's head snapped up. He squints, he can't see much in the dark, but as his eyes adjust, what he sees at the coming out of the park were two reaching hands and a dark, gaping mouth headed right toward him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So before anyone says anything, I know that TWD starts in 2010, and I know that Teddy should be 12 in 2010. But for plot reasons, I just made him 10, but if it bothers anyone, I am sorry. If it helps, I'd just imagine that the apocalypse started in 2008 instead, but that's up to you.


	2. Monster!

A man emerges from the trees, but there's something about him that screams, wrong. Teddy wasn't able to place it at first, but after a few seconds, he sees it. It was in the way the man moved, arms that flopped uselessly in front of him, reaching out for some unseen thing, the gnashing of his teeth, the awkward shuffle he did as he made his way toward Teddy. The complete and utter absence of human expression on his face.

The man continues to stumble forward until it was close enough that Teddy could see his eyes. 

They're yellow, a sickly yellow. Gold almost. Flat and glossed over, and there was not a hint of light in them. 

The thing lets out another snarl, and Teddy scrambles backward, his eyes wide. Pain shoots up his ankle, and he lets out a startled cry, which only serves to spur it on. It lurched forward, it's arms reaching.

Teddy's hands find a fire hydrant, and he pulls himself up. Trying desperately to put distance between himself and the man who was most definitely not a man, at least a normal one. If he didn't know any better, he would say that this was an inferi. But inferi's didn't look like this. They didn't moan or groan, they didn't reek of death and rot, so Teddy knows that isn't what this was.

The thing reaches out again. It's only a little ways from Teddy now, and the closest house is at least twenty feet behind him. He could try to run, but he didn't know if he could go very far with his possibly-broken ankle. His decision is made for him when the monster grabs his arm. 

Teddy quickly yanks it away. Stumbling and falling flat on his bum as he did so. The monster snarls, reaching out once more, and Teddy clambers back, ignoring the screaming pain in his ankle. His fingers close around a rock, and without thinking about it, he throws it.

It hits the monster in the stomach, knocking it over. Giving Teddy time to move away. After a second, it begins climbing steadily to its feet, stumbling on the way up, it regains its bearings and begins walking back toward where Teddy lay on the pavement. Teddy stares with wide eyes as it stumbles forward. It wasn't even trying to stop the flow of the blood that oozed from the wound on its stomach in the way most people would've done. Instead, its arms flopped loosely at its side, and its mouth hung wide open, its teeth clinking together every few seconds as if chewing on something.

That, Teddy decides, is not normal. And so, he decides that he is not staying there any longer, broken ankle and possibly damages he may cause by running on it be damned. He forces himself up, glancing around for any possible shelter, and proceeds to hobble off into the direction of the nearest tree, and the monster follows.

Teddy would like to say that he's a pretty good climber. He used to climb all the time back at home. On furniture, up trees, on people... he and Victoire would often challenge each other to tree climbing competitions at The Burrow to see who could make it up the tree the fastest, a few times some of the younger Weasley's/Potter's joining them. But this wasn't back home. He'd never tried to climb a tree while in danger before, nor had he tried to climb a tree with a broken ankle. 

It hurts, but he manages to find a hold and hauls himself forward. Teddy slowly begins to climb up the tree, careful to not put any pressure on his broken ankle. He's almost at the top when he feels hands grab at his injured ankle, yanking and pulling and trying to drag him down. Pain erupts from his leg, and he just barely bites back a cry of pain as the monster digs its teeth into the skin of his calve just above his broken ankle.

He lets out a shout, instantly starting to kick at the thing, it holds on with a surprisingly good grip for a maybe-dead person. Eventually, he manages to strike the monster right in the head with his other foot. And, quick as lightning, Teddy pulls himself out of reach before the monster could reach out again.

For a few seconds, he lay in the tree, gasping. Hands begin scratching at the tree bark, and he desperately prays that whatever that thing was, couldn't climb. But, judging by the sounds it was making and the way it wasn't making any moves to try and climb up, it probably couldn't. 

The pain in his leg was horrible. Teddy felt horrible. He should've listened to Harry, to his gran! He should've stayed put, if he had, then maybe none of this would've happened, and he would've been back in his gran's arms by now.

He was crying again, as much as he could after running out of tears from this whole exhausting day. He honestly couldn't care less about trying to wipe them away. The rain did a good enough job with that. 

Soon enough, the quiet tears began to multiply, and in seconds, he was sobbing hysterically. His head buried in his knees as he rocked back and forth in the spot where he lay nestled in the tree's branches as the rain continued to soak him. He was cold, tired, lost, alone, just got attacked by some kind of humanoid creature that was by no doubt not human, he was wet, now his leg hurt, and all he wanted was to go back home!

But home was miles away, all the way back in England. Back with Harry and Ginny and James and Albie and Lily, and he was nowhere near close to them. He had no clue where his gran was, and his head was really starting to hurt. 

Teddy stayed like that until he was overcome with the urge to throw up. It washed over him all at once without any warning, a full-body sickness similar to the flu. He leaned over, nearly slipping headfirst out of the tree as he emptied the contents of his stomach.

He sobbed, quiet and broken, as his insides began to burn, and his stomach rolled. Empty yet desperate to be even emptier.

Teddy couldn't find the energy to keep his eyes open. He couldn't, not when he was so exhausted by it all. His sobs turned to whimpers, and his eyelids drooped. It was all black around him now, total darkness surrounding him. His legs still burned, as did his stomach and head, and the monster's growling and snapping didn't seem like it was ending anytime soon, but, somehow, Teddy manages to find sleep.


	3. Oh, There's More

Teddy wakes up almost sweating, or was it just the leftover water from the rain?

Either way, it was ridiculously uncomfortable, and his head still hurt a lot too.

The wetness that clung to his clothing had turned to more of a dampness overnight, and he had a stiffness in his neck from sleeping on it wrong. His stomach screamed at him, his leg still burned, and he felt like throwing up again.

Seconds later, that was just what he did.

A loud snarl caught his attention, and he jumped. The monster was still there, he realized with a start. He had hoped it had been a nightmare, but of course, with his luck, it hadn't been.

He peered down at the gray rotted skin of the monster, still scratching at the tree with its equally as rotted nails. In fact, it was rotted just about everywhere. Its hands, its face, its arms, Teddy held back a gag at the overwhelming smell. Teddy wasn't sure how he even managed to sleep last night!

The more he looked, the more curious he got. It looked even less like a person in the daylight. But then again, he hadn't really seen it last night, really only an outline and the eyes. The rain had stopped though, giving him a better look at the thing, that was good, right?

Another snarl sounded from somewhere unseen, and he froze. He looked up just as another one of the monsters stumbled in from a collection of bushes.

Oh.

Well.

There were two of them.

That's bad.

The second one joined the first in scratching at the tree. Having as much luck in trying to get up as its companion did. Teddy stared down at them with wide eyes. They stared back, yellow eyes blank, lifeless, and hungry. Snarling, hissing, scratching, and teeth snapping.

Yeah, he was really relieved that they couldn't climb.

His attention turns to the throbbing pain in his leg. He adjusted his spot in the tree and reached a hand towards his sneakers, caked in mud, water, and what was probably blood and slowly starts easing them off. He grits his teeth when he takes the right one off, it hurts a lot. Or as Ginny would say whenever she stubbed her toe or something of the like, it hurt like a bitch. Then, he rolled up his jeans.

A wave of queasiness sweeps over him when he eyes the state of his right leg, and Teddy just barely stops himself from throwing up again when he sees the damage. He'd dealt with bruises, scrapes, and cuts before. Teddy had always been very clumsy and would fall over things regularly. But even then, he would only bruise or scrape himself. He'd broken his ankle once when he was six, but he honestly couldn't really remember that all that much.

This was much worse.

Blood ran down the back and sides of Teddy's leg, dribbling down to his formerly white socks. The monster had taken a chunk out of his leg, an actual, literal chunk. Teddy held back a gag as he studied the damage, nose wrinkling at the smell. It was much worse than it looked last night, and it was probably infected too. Blood trickled out of the wound, and pus oozed out the edges. Teddy leaned away, very disgusted.

Wow.

How was he not dead?

He didn't get much of a chance to ponder about it for long, as a loud, bloodcurdling scream splits through the air seconds later. Teddy's head snapped up, and he regretted it instantly when his head erupted with pain. The two monster's turn their heads too, and they immediately tumbled off toward the sound, teeth snapping and groans growing louder.

Teddy sat up, ignoring the ache resonating throughout his body, and pulled himself up between two branches, trying to get a look at what was happening.

At first, Teddy wasn't really able to comprehend what he was seeing. It was almost as if his mind was trying to protect him from reality in a way. But realization quickly dawn's upon him as soon as he sees another monster tearing its fingers into a screaming woman's stomach, dig its teeth into her neck, and tear off a hunk of flesh with a spray of blood that arcs across the pavement and painting the sidewalk red. The other two monsters quickly join in.

Numbly, Teddy blinks, then he blinks again. He then rubs his eyes, trying to wipe the image from his mind or erase whatever it was that he was seeing.

And then he throws up. Again.

When he looks back up, some of the people had emerged from their houses. Probably trying to see what was going on. A man runs over, tries to tear one of the monster's off of the woman, and in return gets a chunk taken from his wrist before being promptly pulled to the ground by one of the monster's who starts eating him too. And then chaos reigns.

People screaming, people dying, Teddy quickly loses sight of everything and everyone in it all. More of the monsters emerge from the alleyways behind the houses, and Teddy spotted a few of them coming out from the park he was hiding out in. They stumble forward, arms reaching, teeth snapping, and Teddy is honestly about to throw up again because, in seconds, the town is teeming with bodies. Some dead, some being eaten alive, some running around screaming, and some stumbling around, moaning and groaning, eating everything in their path. Teddy watches with wide eyes as a little girl is torn away from her mother and looks away just as her pained scream splits the air.

Teddy stares, his nails digging into the tree's bark, and his hair flushing white. People are being eaten all around him. People are dying!

He wants to help them. He wants to help so badly that it hurts. But he can't because he's injured and would most certainly die if he tried too. He's just one person, a ten-year-old boy, and there's at least a hundred of the monster's out there, he doesn't even have his wand yet, he can't do magic, he's totally helpless, and it's killing him, and-

He wants Harry, he wants his gran, he wants to go home. But he can't, because he doesn't know where his gran is, doesn't know if she's alive or not, and he has no way of going home without her. He wouldn't see any of them again: Harry, Ginny, Uncle Ron, Aunt Hermione, he wouldn't see any of his aunt's or uncle's or Victoire or any of the Potter-Weasley's. He was going to die here, up in this tree through starvation, dehydration, fever, or blood loss, or maybe he would try to escape and get eaten alive. None of them are good options, but it was true, wasn't it?

He tears his eyes away from the bloodbath that's happening a few feet away, and covers his ears. But it does nothing to drown out the screams. They filter through, slightly muffled, but he could still hear them, and he knows that he's going to have nightmares about this for a long time. If he even lives a long time.

He sits up there, and he cries, hot tears running down his cheeks through his fingers and falling onto his legs. Some of them trickle down, mingling in with the blood on his leg, but he pays it no mind. He begins to rock himself back and forth, wanting nothing more than to be anywhere but here.


	4. Making an Escape

Five days passed by rather uneventfully, that is, unless you count the occasional scream or two as people tried to escape the town only to be devoured by the monsters. Those moments weren't very pleasant. But other than that, the past few days had passed by somewhat normally. At least, as normal as it can be in a tree surrounded by a bunch of dead cannibals. Speaking of which, Teddy still hadn't moved out from the tree, too petrified by fear to even try and attempt it. Even if he did try, he doubted he would be able to get that far.

There wasn't really much to do up in the tree, so Teddy often passed his time by staring out at the town or trying to hit the monsters with a few twigs he managed to snap off the branches. Teddy actually managed to knock a few of them in the head, not that they really noticed. But it still gave Teddy an odd sense of satisfaction whenever he did manage to do so. But besides that, no, he hadn't moved.

Besides hitting the monsters with sticks, he didn't have much to do. His throat was parched, his stomach rumbled with hunger. Oh, and he most definitely had a fever, and his head hurt a lot. That was fun.

It had rained again on day three, and he had managed to make a bowl out of a random rock he had been able to summon and collect some of the rainwater to drink. Accidental magic was a lifesaver sometimes, literally. He had been trying to save the water, taking little sips a few times a day. It was enough to keep him alive, but it still wasn't able to soothe his dry throat completely. 

The bite on Teddy's leg remained to be an absolute pain in the... well, leg. He pretended not to notice it, but it didn't stop the pain from coming. 

It hurt, as a human bite would, their teeth weren’t really meant to tear flesh like a carnivore, even if most did eat meat, but bites always hurt, no matter where they came from. He had ended up taking his jacket off and using that as a makeshift bandage, it hadn't been able to do much besides soaking up the remaining blood, but the pressure did dull the pain a little. He was also pretty sure it was infected, but he had no idea what an infected wound looked like, so he didn't know for sure.

He also cut the jacket in half (by morphing one of his nails into knives which was _really_ uncomfortable), and made a makeshift cast for his ankle. It also didn't appear to actually do anything, but it made him feel better, at least a little. Emotionally, that is.

The town that surrounded the park was still flooded with the undead. But it was nothing like it had been on the first day, not nearly the same amount of carnage. Dead bodies littered the place, some dead while others... were not so dead. It was disturbing, and there had been no move by the American Government to fix it. He would have expected that at least the American Ministry of Magic would've tried something. But there was nothing. _Bloody wankers._

Another problem of his was that Teddy hadn't eaten since before he had gotten separated from his gran. Which was really taking its toll on him now that he thought about it. Teddy couldn't remember a day that he hadn't had something to eat. Nana Molly would always pile all sorts of foods onto his plate whenever he came over, and Harry was also very insistent on doing the same thing. So Teddy could not remember a time where he had gone hungry, and it was really affecting him. His stomach was frequently cramping in pain, only adding to his discomfort as he tried to stay out of reach from the monsters that still surrounded his tree.

He knew he had to get out of here, preferably soon. But he didn't know how. There was a bunch of the monsters surrounding the tree he was in, and he couldn't really do anything to lure them away. And even if he did, how would he be able to run away with his leg all mangled up? If he wasn't able to outrun them, then... he shuddered at the thought.

So now, all he could do was sit and wait for something to happen. And who knows how long that would take.

Teddy peered in between the two large branches he was perched on, looking down at the destruction below. Several car alarms blared, providing some background noise as the town was destroyed by the undead. The groans of the monsters were really the only thing he could hear besides that. 

Teddys sighed, resting his head on his hand as he watched the town full of undead, his eyes wandering in hopes of finding some sort of place to escape. A place where he could be safe.

Of course, with his luck, he found none.

* * *

Another day passed by, and Teddy woke to the sound of gunfire and screaming.

Teddy pushed himself up, his eyes wide as he peered through the tree branches to get a good look at what was going on. 

Police cruisers lined the street in every direction, some parks right up against the sidewalks, while others were angled in a way that formed makeshift barriers. He sees the local, state, and county uniforms, he sees the sunlight glinting off of the barrel of a gun, Teddy watches wide-eyed as the stark-faced police officers begin going around the town, shooting monsters in the head.

But it wasn't just the monsters they were shooting at.

Teddy watches as a bloodied woman who can't be much older than Ginny is now, limp out of the house she was probably hiding out in, maybe thinking that she was going to be saved, only to get shot right in between the eyes by one of the officers. She crumpled to the floor in a heap, and the officers continue on as if nothing had happened. 

The monster's that were hanging out by his tree turn with loud and hungry groans, stumbling off in the direction of the shooting officer's; teeth bared and hands grasping. 

Teddy saw his chance. 

As fast as he could, he began inching and easing his way down the other side of the tree that wasn't facing the town or carnage. 

Teddy shifted a bit on his way down, trying to find what he thought could be a good foothold but only resulting in him blindly kicking at the tree in the side a few times with his uninjured foot. 

Eventually, Teddy chanced a look down to see how far he was. His arms were getting pretty tired now, and his grip wasn't all that strong. He couldn't really see that well, but he could hear the groans of a few monsters nearby, so he risked closing his eyes and letting go.

He fell to the ground with an oopf. Teddy quickly scrambled to his feet, as quick as he could with his injured leg, and begins limping off in the opposite direction as fast as he could. Pain shot up his leg, but ignored it, he needed to get out of here.

The park in this town doesn't really have an end in this direction. It's more of an opening to the woods. No one's getting eaten or murdered back here, but a few monsters are stumbling around, and one gets close enough to bite Teddy before he quickly swerved to the side. A second monster began clawing at the grass as it tried to reach for him, but it's not really moving much, so Teddy ignored it. Instead, he looked forward. 

It's the only way he could look. Not if he wanted to watch as people were slaughtered and eaten, which he didn't. 

The trees surround him from all sides, closing around him. It muffled the sound of gunfire, and Teddy moved forward. He stumbles over a root that sticks out of the ground like a tripwire, but he doesn't fall. He doesn't pay any attention to the pain in his leg.

He keeps moving. Even with his injured leg and a raging fever, he keeps going, and he doesn't dare look back. 

* * *

Eventually, Teddy slows from a limping run to a walk. Not that he's lost his sense of urgency or anything, but because the deeper into the forest he goes, the denser the foliage becomes, and it's kind of hard to go at full speed when you're worried about crashing into a tree. Oh, and his leg and head both hurt like a lot, and he could rapidly feel himself growing weaker by the second.

He runs and runs, and then he walks and walks. Because he's scared, hungry, tired, cold, and still kind of wet, and his head hurt, and he does not want to spend the night somewhere in the forest where some monster can stumble upon him and eat him for lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast. Or dessert. Do monsters have feeding schedules?

Each step was agonizing, and with his broken ankle, he didn't think he could last long. The dark blue sneakers Uncle George had bought for him were wet, torn, and were beginning to rub at the blisters forming on the bottom of his feet. He had long since stopped paying attention to the blood that had started soaking through the fabric of his jeans.

So he walked forward, though the darkening forest in the direction that was the most accessible to him. The sky above him shone a blueish-purple color, and he could feel his eyes beginning to droop. His feet were tired from all the walking he was doing, his leg was aching so badly he could barely move it, and his chest was feeling shaky and cold from being alone so long. He wanted nothing more than to have his gran there with him, or Harry, it was dark and scary in the woods, and he just wanted someone there with him. But he didn't even know if they were alive, and Harry was all the way back in England with no way of knowing where Teddy was.

Teddy wasn't sure how long he'd been moving for, but judging by the position of the sun, he was going to say quite a few hours. It had been midday when the gunfire started, and it was closer to sunset now. The sky was rapidly darkening, and Teddy really did not want to be in the forest after dark.

Eventually, he comes across a little stream and forces himself to stop. He glanced up both ends, studying the flowing water. It was too broad for him to step across, and the fast rate at which the water was flowing at made him rethink trying to wade through it.

So, he moved up the stream where it was coming from, tripping here and there a few times before accidentally slipping off the side and ending up calf-deep in the icy-cold water. His leg erupts in pain, and he immediately cried out, clutching at his leg while just barely holding back his tears. Water rushed at him from the side, nearly knocking him further in, and he grits his teeth at the cold.

After quite a bit of struggling, Teddy finally managed to pull himself onto his feet, before cringing when his ankle instantly began to protest. He limped to the other side of the stream, pausing to drink some of the water before pulling himself out and continuing his trek.

His leg was really hurting now, both from his ankle and the bite. The water didn't do anything to help in matters either if anything, it only made everything worse.

After a few more minutes of walking, the pain in his leg soon becomes unbearable, and he's forced to stop for a bit. Resting beside an old tree and catching his breath. He keeps an eye and ear out for any signs of monsters coming his way. From what he could tell from the week he spent in that tree, the monsters were attracted to the smell of blood, and he probably stank of it. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any monsters nearby, and Teddy was able to rest for a bit without any interference.

He finds a long stick in the grass and uses it as a makeshift splint for his leg, tying it in place with a piece of his shirt he tore off. As he finished, a loud growl erupted from somewhere behind him.

Annnd, he spoke too soon.

Teddy spins around to find a monster stumbling toward him with hands outstretched. Teddy yelped in surprise and jerked back, falling flat onto his bum before scrabbling backward.

Before he could get up, the monster pinned him to the ground. Teddy's hands pushed at its chest, only just keeping its snapping jaws away from his face. Its breath reeks of rot and Teddy gags, trying to put as much distance between them both as possible.

But he's losing, he couldn't keep it away for long. From the corner of his eye, Teddy spots a decent-sized rock a little ways away. Without thinking about it, he reached a hand out and grabbed it. The monster's face lurched, and he gasps as its teeth just barely graze his cheek.

With all the strength he could muster, Teddy slams the rock into the monster's head, managing to knock it off him, without wasting a second, Teddy lunged forward and bashed it into the monster's head again, and again, and again, until it was limp beneath him.

He leaned back, staring at the dead monster with wide-eyes. His hands were covered in its blood, and his leg was hurting more than ever before. He could feel the beginnings of another headache forming, and he knew if he didn't move soon, he would regret it later.

But he didn't want to move, couldn't bring himself to pull himself up and get moving again. His leg hurt, he was wet, he was cold, his head hurt, and now he was covered in blood. He bit back a sob, though all he wanted to do was burst into tears. But that would attract more monsters, and he didn't think he would be able to handle it if more came.

After sitting there for a few more moments, Teddy somehow manages to pull himself to his feet, swaying slightly at the sudden lightheadedness he felt. After he managed to gather himself, he started to walk again: stumbling, tripping, and nearly falling several times as he moved.

He bit back another cry of pain when he accidentally kicked his ankle against an old log, only just stopping himself from falling over. The pain was unbearable now, and he could hardly see straight. He was gasping with every breathe, and he could rapidly feel himself growing weaker by the second.

Shoot.

Was he going to collapse?

He hoped not, but judging by his luck, he probably was.

Teddy began shuffling around. He didn't have much time, and unless he wanted to pass out in the middle of woods where any monster could come across him, he needed to find someplace to rest. He didn't have enough energy to climb another tree, and even if he did, he doubted that he would be able to get back down after. Not in his condition.

Salvation came in the form of a small hollowed-out hole inside of a tree trunk. Teddy fell to the forest floor, he scraped his knees on a series of rocks and twigs as he landed, but paid it no mind as he crawled inside the hollow and pressed himself against the nearest wall, as far away from the opening as possible.

The sky outside was near black now, and the temperature was dropping lower and lower. Tears began blurring his eyes, and this time, he didn't stop them. So he cries. He cries and cries and cries. He cries for what felt like days. He cries because he misses his gran, he misses Harry. He misses home and The Burrow and the feeling of being loved. He misses the strong motherly hugs that Nana Molly would always give to him whenever she saw him and the movie nights he had with Harry and Ginny.

He misses it all so much that it hurts. Or maybe that's just his leg. But it hurts all the same. He didn't have it in him to fight his eyelids to make them stay open, so he didn't. It was all black around him now, and the darkness began creeping into his mind. Eventually, he succumbs to darkness, lulled into a fitful sleep by the sound of his own tears.

* * *

Teddy felt like he was dying.

Everything hurt: his lungs, his chest, his heart, his head, his stomach, his throat, and his leg. He felt as if he had just caught the worst fever in his life, and if Teddy's being honest, he probably had. He couldn't move, couldn't even lift a finger. He just didn't have the energy. His body was freezing, his throat dry and in flames, and his head felt like it was being repeatedly beaten by a bolling ball.

Teddy curled up further into himself, desperately wishing he had a blanket or two to cover himself with. The forest was unbelievably cold at night, and the day's heat did nothing to help his body's constant sweating. Even the small hollow he was tucked away in didn't do much to combat the chill rattling his bones.

His stomach began churning, and Teddy felt the bile forcing itself up his throat. He didn't even feel himself throwing up, but he felt the burn in his throat and the bitter aftertaste. His stomach continued to churn, and a raw itch lodged itself into the back of his throat. He coughed, once, twice, three times, and the feeling only got worse.

Tears began to burn at his eyes, and a silent sob tore itself from his throat. He dug his nails dug into his palm as the hacking, gasping sound echoed around the forest filled with the dead.

It was only after he curled back up in the corner, still gasping for breath after his coughing fit, that he noticed the dark red smudges staining his jacket. Teddy felt his stomach drop as he stared at his sleeve.

Had he just coughed up blood?

* * *

The blind vomiting, feverish haze, and the painful ache that resonated throughout his body didn’t subside as time passed on. If anything, it only grew worse.

He didn't know how long he had been there. He drifted in and out of consciousness at random moments, and he had long since lost track of time because of it. Time lost any sense of meaning as his body and brain waged war against his worsening fever, determined to keep him alive. He knew it couldn't have been more than a week. He read somewhere that people could only go three days without water, a little longer if they were lucky. And Teddy knew that the last time he had water was a few hours before he escaped from the infested town.

Faintly, he could hear the sounds of various monsters hissing and groaning outside of the hollow he was holed up in. But not a single one of them had noticed him, none had tried reaching into the small hole to make an easy meal of him. If he hadn’t been so out of it, he might’ve made the connection to the aroma of sick that surrounded him as well as the blood staining his clothing to the monster’s ignorance of him. But he didn’t, and he really couldn’t find it in him to care.

His vision was a mess. The only things he could see were dark and hazy. It was all he could see, even if it wasn't much.

He gasped for breath, trying to find something to fill his lungs but found little air. He was growing weaker by the moment, and he knew that if he fell back asleep that there was little chance of him waking back up. But he could feel the darkness pushing at his mind, taking over his consciousness bit by bit.

He wanted to scream, but the dryness of his throat prevented him from finding his voice. All that came out was a small, pitiful whimper that only served to worsen his pain. His head and leg were burning like they had been lit on fire, and the pain was worse than anything else he ever felt before.

He was vaguely aware of the monsters snarling and hardly registered as they were cut off, one by one. Faintly, he identified the sound of footsteps coming his way, and if possible, he curled up even more on himself.

Hands were on him, and he cried out, waiting for the pain to come as the dead began to tear into his flesh.

Instead, a voice reached him.

"Oh my god. Stop! This one's alive." The voice belonged to a woman, her voice full of something similar to shock.

He was faintly aware of somebody talking, a male this time. Then he felt as a pair of arms wrapped around him, scooping him up and lifting him into the air. Another whimper tore itself from his throat, not understanding what was happening or who these people were. He didn't get much of a chance to think about it as the darkness surrounded him and he blacked out.


	5. One of the Dead

_ "What are you doing out here?" _

_ Teddy glanced up from where he sat on the grass, grinning when he saw his godfather emerge from The Burrow and start making his way toward him. Harry was looking at him curiously, and Teddy realized he was waiting for an answer. _

_ "I dunno," Teddy responded, he turned back to the blade of grass he had been ripping apart before Harry appeared. "Wanted to be alone, I guess."  _

__

_ Harry raised a brow "alone?" He repeated, sounding baffled, "You? Teddy, you hate being alone." _

_ Teddy huffed, dropping the piece of grass and crossing his arms. "Not always." _

_ Harry sat down next to him, wrapping an arm around Teddy's waist and pulling him into his lap. Teddy made a sound of protest and tried to move. But Harry held him down without much trouble, chuckling at his response. _

_ "What? Can't a man sit with his godson?" Harry teased, amusement in his tone.  _

_ Teddy scowled, adjusting himself so he could glare up at him. "You can sit with me without having me on your lap! I'm nine, Harry, almost ten! Not six!" _

_ "Could've fooled me," Harry said with a laugh, which turned to a yelp when Teddy elbowed him in the gut. "Okay, okay, m'sorry!" _

_ Teddy scowled, and Harry's face softened, his eyebrows creasing with worry. "Okay, seriously, though. Is everything alright? You've been acting strange." He tucked a hand under Teddy's chin, tilting his face up to look at Teddy in the eye. "You know you can tell me anything, right?" _

_ "I know." Teddy shook his head from Harry's grasp. "I just..." He trailed off. _

_ Understanding dawned in Harry's eyes. "It's about going to America, isn't it?" Teddy nodded, and Harry frowned,  _

_ "I thought you wanted to go?" _

_ "I do!" Teddy really did. But his problem didn't lie with that. "It's just..." _

_ "Just what?" _

_ "Nevermind, you'll think it's stupid," Teddy mumbled.  _

_ Warm arms wrapped around him, pulling him, if possible, even closer, and Teddy didn't hesitate in burrowing his face into Harry's shirt.  _

_ "Why would I think it's stupid?" Harry asked, running a hand through Teddy's curls, something that always worked in getting Teddy to relax. _

_ "I dunno, you just will," Teddy said, his voice muffled from the fabric.  _

_ "That doesn't make much sense," was Harry's reply. "C'mon, you gotta at least tell me." _

_ Teddy sighed, "It's just... me and gran are going to be there for five months. Five! I don't think I've ever been away from you for that long and, I dunno, it just... it scares me." _

_ Harry's arms tightened around him. After a few moments, he leaned back, studying Teddy with a conflicted look in his eyes. "How 'bout this," he said after a few moments. "You try to enjoy yourself and, if by the time your birthday passes, you still feel that way, then you can come home. Okay?" _

_ "You mean it?" Teddy asked hesitantly. "You won't be mad?" _

_ Harry smiled, "of course not, Teddy." He leaned closer as if he were about to tell a secret. "And how about once you get back - in five months or two - you and I can make a  _ **_huge_ ** _ chocolate cake for the family to share, how does that sound?"  _

_ Teddy nodded to himself, a small smile forming on his face. "I'd like that." _

_ "Then it's settled!" Harry said with a grin. "Now, I don't know about you, but it's getting real cold out here, and I really don't want to freeze to death, so how about we head back inside. Plus, your Nana told me she was going to be making cookies!" _

_ Teddy laughed, grinning widely. "Do you think we can get her to put extra chocolate chips in them?" _

_ Harry bopped him on the nose, eliciting a small giggle out of his godson. "Oh, I know we can!" _

* * *

Teddy woke with a gasp, his heart pounding. He tried to get up, but as soon as he tried, hands began pushing him down. Voices immediately started clogging his senses. 

"Hey, take it easy there, kid."

"He's awake?"

"I think so. Kid, can you hear me?"

He couldn't see anything, why couldn't he see? Everything hurt, everything was too bright. He felt lightheaded and nauseous, his vision swam, and once the smell of blood registered to him, he rolled over to the side of whatever he was laying on and vomited, his middle lurching painfully as his stomach emptied. 

"Holy shit! Dad, you need to get down here!"

"Is that blood in there?"

The taste of bile in his throat was sickening, but he couldn't stop it. He heaved and heaved up until there was nothing else left to come up, before collapsing back onto what he assumed was a mattress. His arms wound around his chest, his teeth chattering, he couldn't stop shivering. Why was everything so cold?

The sound of footsteps entering the room caught his attention. "What's going on?" A voice demanded.

"It's the kid, he just-"

"Threw up, everywhere. There's blood, Daddy!"

The voices mixed together as one, sounding distorted, almost as if he were underwater. He tried to speak, but all that came out was an unintelligible garble. He was so cold, but he was so hot at the same time and his leg-

"We need to put him under, Beth, go to the bathroom, there should be something in the cabinets!"

"Got it!"

"Hershel, we need to do something!"

"You think I don't know that, Patricia?" 

His leg...

There was a stinging sensation in his arm, and Teddy dropped once more into the depths of unconsciousness.

* * *

Teddy drifts.

It wasn't that he blacks out or is unconscious, really. It's more like he's stuck between both consciousness and unconsciousness. He's aware that things are happening around him, he hears and feels, but he can't move or see anything either. There would be times where he would drift closer to waking up only to be hit by a pain so horrible that he would cry out. Whenever that happened, it usually took only a minute or two for a new drug to be administered, numbing him to the world once more.

In the brief moments where he was more conscious than not, he managed to catch a few snippets of conversations happening around him. Most he forgot pretty quickly as he slipped back into his numb haze, but there were a few bits that stuck out in his mind.

_ "He shouldn't even be alive." _

_ "If we had found him a day later, he'd be dead." _

_ "The fever should've killed him long ago." _

The phrases 'he's lucky' and 'he should be dead' came up several more times in these conversations. But he didn't feel lucky, he felt like he was dying. All he wanted to do was to go home to Harry and Ginny. 

But he knew he couldn't, not for a while anyway.

* * *

_ It was raining, had been for the last two days. _

_ Teddy ducked his head, raising a hand to try and shield himself against the downpour. He wrapped his other arm around himself, not that it did much. It was cold up in the tree. His clothes were soaked, clinging to his skin like glue, and he was quickly losing the feeling in his fingers and nose.  _

_ His leg was throbbing, as was his head, both in rhythm with his heartbeat. It hurt a lot, Teddy wasn't sure if he had ever felt a worse pain than this. He could feel himself slowly losing consciousness again, his vision was going in and out of focus, everything besides his leg was numb, and the nagging pain in his head wouldn't go away. _

_ He didn't think he's ever felt worse than this. The hopelessness and pain were starting to get to him, and he rubbed away the tears that were beginning to well in his eyes. The monsters were everywhere, and he couldn't escape. Their growls haunted his nightmares, and he couldn't stop seeing them tearing the town people apart. Couldn't help but wonder if one of those were his gran.  _

_ The monsters were everywhere, and he couldn't help but feel as if he were one of them.  _

* * *

Teddy jolted awake again, gasping for breath and feeling as if he were falling. 

It was only because of a pair of hands holding him down that he realized he was thrashing, but he couldn't find it in him to stop. Where was he? Why did everything hurt? Every muscle, every nerve, every cell on his body was screaming in pain. The hands were weighing down on his chest, and he gasped for breath. It hurt to breathe, everything hurt, there was so much pain-

He wanted to go home.

A face swam into view. A young-looking woman, around Harry's age or a little younger, if he had to guess. Her face was pale, dark shadows forming under her eyes, and brown hair tousled and unkempt.

"Hey, you with us, kid?" A whimper escaped from his throat, and Teddy felt a hand press against his forehead before pulling away seconds later as if it had been stung.

"Shit, he's burning up!"

"That's good," a voice chimed in, "means his body's fighting off the infection." 

"So, we can't do anything?" Another voice - another girl - asked. "Isn't there any way we could help him?"

Teddy squeezed his eyes shut, another whimper escaping his lips. His throat was parched and dry, his mouth tasted like blood and vomit, he hated it, everything was hurting, and he just wanted it all to stop. People were talking around him, but their voices were too loud on his ears. He really, really, wanted to tell them to go away or to stop talking, but his throat felt like it was filled with thorns, and any attempts he made were futile and only served to cause him pain.

"We've done all we can, Bethy, now all we have to do left is wait."

"How do we know if this will even work?"

"We don't. I don't even know if the boy is going to recover from this or not. He's a tough one, but he lost a lot of blood. Even then, the fever was pretty bad when we found him. We might not've taken the leg off quickly enough."

His mind drew to a halt. 

His leg.

Memories he didn't even know he had came rushing back to him like a tidal wave.

_ "Hold him down!" _

_ He struggled against the hands holding him down, thrashing and kicking, but they didn't budge. _

_ "Otis, now!" _

_ A loud crack echoed in his ears, and, seconds later, a white-hot pain engulfed him. A pained scream tore itself from his throat. He thrashed and kicked, and it didn't stop. It hurt, it hurt so much- _

Panic seized his body like a raging current. The pain-filled memories struck him like a bolt of lightning. He could still feel it, something sharp hacking through his flesh, crushing the bones with a piercing, splitting sound and a spray of blood-

And Teddy crashed back into darkness.

* * *

_ The gunfire was so loud.  _

_ He had never heard guns before, at least not in real life. Sure, he had heard them in TV shows and movies, but that was nothing compared to what they were in reality. He knew they were loud, but he never expected them to be so deafening.  _

_ Teddy rubbed his ears, trying to stop the ringing in them as he ran through the trees. Teddy was so tired, and all the ten-year-old wanted to do was sleep. But Teddy knew he shouldn't. Not when he was this close to the town filled with monsters. Both alive and dead. It didn't matter, not if he wanted to live.  _

_ His foot slipped from under him, and he fell with a loud thud and a cry of pain. He stuck his knuckle into his mouth, trying to stifle the sound. He forced himself up, gritting his teeth as the rocks dug into the soft skin of his arms. His leg hurt so much more than it had before if that were possible. He needed to rest it, but he needed to get away too. _

_ He got up, resting a hand on a nearby tree trunk to steady himself, and once he found his balance, he kept moving. _

* * *

When Teddy finally comes too, the first thing he was aware of was the pain. It was a sharp, stinging pain that pulsed, throbbed, and ached throughout his body with every heartbeat. It consumed him, enveloped him until it was all there was. His leg was the worst by far. It felt as if a thousand small knives were being dug into his leg all at once, burning and throbbing with such pain that Teddy nearly blacked out once more. A small part of Teddy wondered if he had died, that he was in the afterlife, and was forever cursed to the pain ripping his leg and head to pieces. Teddy also felt very cold, even though he could clearly feel some sort of blanket covering his body. Where it came from? He had no clue.

Teddy eased his eyes open, groaning, and immediately squeezing them shut as a bright light accosted them. 

A few seconds passed, so he slowly - and more carefully this time - pried open his eyes, blinking slowly as the room came into view. He was able to make out a mesh of blurry colors, and a few shapeless blobs that he assumed was furniture, but that was it. He didn't recognize his surroundings or the room he was in, and a thread of panic sprouted in his gut. The lighting was somewhat better, still way too bright, but much more bearable than it was before.

His mouth and throat were drier than a desert, leaving him unable to form words. His head was aching, leaving him unable to recall any details of the past few days no matter how hard he tried. He inhaled deeply, taking in a strong lungful of air that quickly prompted him to break out into a coughing fit that rattled his bones and made his head pound all the more. 

He had closed his eyes when he had begun coughing, and when he reopened them, Teddy found himself staring up at an unfamiliar face. 

It was a woman, a girl really. She reminded him vaguely of Victoire: pale skin, blue eyes, and blonde hair, but her hair was more of a pale blonde rather than the strawberry blonde of Victoire's, and her eyes were more of a dark blue rather than Victoire's sky blue. On top of that, she was much older - well, maybe not much, but at least by a few years. 

She stared down at Teddy with worried, blue eyes, before taking a step back upon realizing that Teddy was staring back. 

"I heard you coughing, it sounded pretty bad." The girl said, her voice barely a whisper, "are you okay?"

Teddy stared at her uncertainly, unsure of what to do or say. Not that he could say anything. It took a few seconds for the girl to pick up on this. 

"Oh," she said softly, understanding dawning on her, "would you like some water?"

Too much in pain to speak, he nodded rapidly. Harry had always told him not to take things from strangers, but he was already in a stranger's house, so he doubted it mattered much now. Plus, his throat was still totally parched, and he really wanted something to drink. There was also the fact that he needed to be able to speak if he was going to get answers.

The girl left the room, coming back a few moments later with a glass of water in hand. He took it gratefully, sitting up and downing half its contents before quickly clamping a hand over his mouth as the urge to throw up washed over him. He coughed on the water, accidentally letting some of it dribble onto his chin. After a few moments when the urge had passed, he put it back to his mouth, finishing the glass in a few quick gulps. It hurt to swallow, but the cold liquid worked wonders in soothing the dryness in his throat. 

"Thank you," Teddy said hoarsely, wincing as a stab of pain ran down his throat. "I... where am I? Who are you?" 

"My name's Beth," the girl said, "and you're in my house." She paused, a look of curiosity crossing her face. "What's your name?"

Teddy knew he probably shouldn't be telling random people his name, but he had a feeling that if the people here were going to hurt him, they would've done it already. So it couldn't hurt. "I'm Teddy."

"Teddy? Is that short for something, like Edward or Theodore?"

"Yeah, Edward. I prefer Teddy though," He wrinkled his nose. "Edward sounds way too formal and posh for my liking." A sudden thought came to mind, "Um... how did I get here exactly?"

He couldn't really remember much. He remembered the police going around shooting people and monsters alike, running into the forest, falling into the stream, and crawling into the hollow. He remembered how horrible he had felt, the fever, the coughing, and a terrible pain but not much else.

"My sister, Maggie, brought you here. She and Otis, a family friend of sorts, found you surrounded by the sick ones. They brought you back where my Daddy patched you up, we weren't sure if you would make it, you looked pretty bad. They had too-" A look of hesitance passed over her face.

A cold feeling of dread settled in his stomach, "what happened? They had too what?" 

She bit her lip, glancing away, but didn't say anything. 

But she didn't need too. Teddy's mind wandered back to the pain in his leg, the pain he was gradually becoming aware of again. Beth had taken him by surprise, and the whole conversation, along with his questions and coughing fit, had distracted him. But everything was coming back now. 

He forced himself up into a sitting position - having laid back down sometime while they were talking - gasping at the sudden lightheadedness he felt at the movement. He sat there for a few moments, waiting for the feeling to go away. When it did, he leaned forward with a trembling hand, but Beth grabbed his hand, keeping him from pulling the blanket back. "I don't know if you should look at it. You'll be fine."

Teddy gave Beth a terrified look, trying to ignore the tears that were beginning to well up in his eyes. "Y-your Dad... he f-fixed it, right? P-please tell me he d-did." 

She stayed silent, and Teddy tore his hand from her grasp. He reached forward, tugging the blanket off of him in one quick motion. It fell to the floor with a soft thump, but Teddy didn't bother picking it up, too busy staring with slacked jaws at his leg.

Or rather, what was left of it.

One or two inches below his right knee, his leg was gone. Not even there, his leg just... stopped. What remained of it was wrapped in multiple layers of blood-soaked bandages, lying motionlessly on the bed like a giant boulder was sitting on it. It was then that everything came rushing back. The forest, being found by somebody, the pain as his leg was hacked off. His breathing began to quicken, and his chest began to tighten.

His leg was a stump, an actual stump.

His leg was gone.

Teddy could do nothing but stare at it, tears springing in his eyes as his hands flew to his mouth to stifle a cry. He was slowly becoming aware of the pain again. The dull ache that was radiating from the stump that was gradually climbing up his leg like a burning flame. A sour taste filled his mouth, and he felt like he was about to throw up again.

"Oh." He whispered after a moment, all the air in his lungs whooshing out as if he'd just been thrown to the ground. Teddy felt as if his heart had just stopped beating. His already blocked throat seemed to tighten even more, leaving him in a wide-eyed shock as he stared at what remained of his right leg. 

"I'm sorry," Beth said, her eyes sad and her voice trembling. But Teddy hardly heard her, the thundering in his ears drowning out any other sounds as he stared down at his leg. "D...Daddy said he had too. You had a horrible fever, and a wound on your leg was infected. Badly. He said to try and treat it would have been a death warrant - you would've died from the infection, that they had to cut it off."

There was something sorrowful in her tone - pity, sympathy, he didn't know, and he didn't really care. A choked sob escaped his lips, and he didn't bother holding it back as tears began to flow from his eyes. His vision was starting to blur, and his stomach began to churn. The pounding in his head seemed to increase by the second, and the pain was almost unbearable. 

He wanted Harry, he wanted Ginny, he wanted his gran. He wanted someone - anyone at all. Someone familiar, he didn't care who. It could be Mrs. Malfoy or Draco for Merlin's sake, he just wanted somebody with him. His chest begun to tighten while his lungs heave for air. The next thing he knew, Teddy was being pushed back down onto the bed while Beth called out for someone, her voice panicked. 

He's in too much of a panic to register anyone coming through the door, bombarding Beth with questions. Doesn't even notice the voices and conversations flowing around him, or the shuffling of a bag as someone walked forward. The next thing he knew, something sharp was being pushed into his arm, and his vision darkened. 

And then, everything fades away.

* * *

When Teddy comes too, it's with a bit less confusion as before. His mind was clearer, and his thoughts less muddled as he emerged from the depths of unconsciousness. But while his mind is clear, his body felt heavy. He could only assume that it was from whatever muggle substance (What did Aunt Hermione call them? Drugs?) from earlier that was making him feel so weird. As soon as he escaped from his numbed trance, he lifted his head, blinking in dismay as he looked around the room. 

It wasn't a dream. 

He reached forward and pulled the blanket back, his throat tightening as he stared at what remained of his leg. He tried to wiggle his toes, and while his left foot did so, his right leg only twitched, sending a shock of pain through him. That was... weird. It felt like he was wiggling his toes, but he just couldn't see it.  _ Talk about unsettling.  _

Teddy's brows furrowed as a thought came to mind. Would he be able to morph his leg back?

He didn't really know a lot about metamorphmagi except that only he and his mother were the last known ones in centuries. He knew he could change his hair color and make weird faces, he's done those things before. And Teddy's also done a lot of strange things like making his arms into octopus tentacles to scare the heck out of Victoire, but he never heard about what would happen if a metamorphmagus lost a limb or something of the like. Teddy knew there was a magic that could regrow limbs (as long as it wasn't caused by dark magic), but he didn't know if metamorphmagus magic could do something similar.

Maybe he could try? Teddy stared at his leg, his nose wrinkling in concentration, trying to will his leg back into existence. A few seconds passed, and when nothing happened, Teddy gave up, flopping back down onto the bed with a defeated groan. His breathing began to grow shallow, and he choked back a sob, his head pounding. What use were his abilities if they couldn't work the way he needed them too? 

He rubbed at his eyes, trying to wipe away the tears that had begun to well up. His leg was starting to ache a bit more, possibly from his attempt at morphing, probably from whatever drugs these people had used wearing off, and Teddy felt like he was about to scream.

His stomach was twisting and cramping with pain, a constant reminder of his hunger. Teddy winded his arm around his middle, a small, muffled whimper escaping his lips. A can of something placed on the wooden bedside quickly caught his attention and, without thinking about it, he grabbed it. He held the can to his eyes, reading the label,  _ Sliced Pears. _

Teddy settled himself against the wall, and, with trembling hands, he pried open the can of pears. He reaches a hand inside, fishing out one of the fruits with his fingers. Teddy bit into it hesitantly, the taste making him gag. He had never been much of a fan of pears. But Teddy's also starving, and beggars couldn't be choosers after all. Teddy tried to pace himself, but he ended up finishing most of the can within minutes - seconds really.

He set the empty can aside, settling tiredly against the soft pillows. His stomach was full, but also a bit unsettled after going so long without food. He glanced around warily, but then exhaustion began to take over, and despite having just woken up, Teddy felt himself gradually slipping back into darkness. Soon enough, he's lured back into the depths of his mind, and his body went slack. Seconds later, sleep began to take over, and he nestled his head into the pillows, curling up into the ball with the blankets clustered around him.

Sleep took over, and this time, Teddy let it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that a few people might be confused as to why Teddy survived so long without turning, and it's not because he's immune exactly. But it's something similar. 
> 
> The reason Teddy hasn't turn yet is because of his magic. My idea is Teddy's magic slowed down the process enough that he hasn't turned yet. It could probably do the same for any other witch or wizard too. As you can see, it took a total of five days for it to finally take a toll on him. If it was a muggle who got bit, they probably would've turned already. If Teddy hadn't gotten any help, he probably would've turned after another week.


	6. Waking

Teddy's eyes snap open, taking in the dark room around him. His head pounded, and his leg ached, but the pain was more bearable than before as he slowly grappled for consciousness. His vision was hazy: blurry and unclear and altogether not very useful at the moment. A window had to be open somewhere in the room, as a crisp, clean, and chilling draft wafted around his face, and he shivered a little, nuzzling his nose into the blankets wrapped around him. 

Light filtered in through the open window, and Teddy could hear all kinds of sounds seeping through from the outside: birds chirping, chickens crowing, cows mooing, horses nickering, and bugs buzzing. He's on a farm of some kind, judging by the sounds and smells drifting in through the window. He's been to a farm a few times before, the first time being when Harry had taken him horseback riding for his eighth birthday. He could never really forget the smell, not that it was unpleasant or anything, just very distinct. His eyes flutter close once more, wanting nothing more than to fall back asleep.

Teddy wasn't sure how long he lay there, listening to the animal's bickering in an obscure passage between waking and sleeping. It felt like he had been lying there forever before he finally gained the energy to start moving again. The drugged feeling from before was gone - in its place was a sleepy numbness that came from waking each morning. He felt lighter than he had the last few times he had awoken, everything hurt a little less, and the pounding in his head had finally ceased. 

His eyes flicker open, he was facing a wall where the window was situated. His vision was less hazy now, and he was able to see the vivid blue of the sky from where he lay without much difficulty. Clouds were dotted across the beautiful blue, and sunlight shimmered down through the misty clouds, filtering through the window, it's warmth engulfing his skin. It was altogether what looked like a beautiful day, and Teddy wondered if the monsters could notice the same, or if their only thoughts were on eating their next meal. Probably the latter.

Teddy's throat was a little dry, but it was nothing like it was when he first woke up. He rolled to the side, rubbing his eyes and forcing himself up. A twinge of pain rolled up his leg, and he winced. He pulled back part of the blankets and was greeted with the sight of bandages wrapped around the stump of what used to be his leg. He sighed and quickly recovered the leg, not wanting to stare at it any more than he had too. He could only imagine how much worse it looked without the bandages. All he could imagine was a bloodied stump with bits of splintered bone sticking out.

Not liking where his current train of thought was going, he tried to turn his mind to other things. He lifted his head and glanced around, taking a look at the rest of his surroundings. Teddy hadn't gotten much of a good look at the room he was in before - as he had been way too panicked to really register anything. But judging by the dullness of the room and lack of any personal belongings or decorations, he could easily discern that it was probably a guest bedroom. Teddy felt a little more at ease at this observation, it was good to know he wasn't highjacking someone else's room.

A yawn forced itself from his mouth, and Teddy took in a shaky breath after it, only to break out into another coughing fit. 

After a few moments, he stopped hacking, and his breathing began to even out. He bit back another yawn, glancing around curiously once more and spotted a backpack leaning on one of the bedroom walls in the corner of the room. He stared at it for a few moments, confused as to why it was there. Curiosity stirred within him, and he inched to the far end of the bed. It was too far away for him to grab, so, setting his jaw, Teddy quietly swung his leg over the side of the bed. A few moments later, he brought his other leg down to meet the first. It felt much lighter than he remembered.

Slowly, Teddy lowered himself to the floor, carefully maneuvering himself onto his hands and knees. The carpet was soft beneath him, and Teddy spared a moment to prod it with a finger before crawling forward. 

Teddy hissed in pain as he moved, every little movement sending a shock of pain up his leg. He reached the wall in a few seconds time, quickly grabbing at one of the straps as soon as he was close enough and yanking it to him. He scooted backward until his back hit the bedpost and, with his brows furrowed, unzipped the bag. 

Teddy couldn't stop the grin that formed on his face when he spotted the various books stuffed inside the bag. He reached inside, sifting through the bag's contents before pulling out one of the books. He turned it over, reading the cover:  _ The Hunger Games. _

A spark of curiosity flared in his chest, and he flipped the book open to the first page, not bothering to pull himself back onto the bed. Rest could wait, he wanted to read.

_ When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping. _

A part of Teddy wondered what Prim's bad dreams were about. He had bad dreams too, occasionally, usually consisting of either Harry dying or his parents telling him how disappointed they were in him. But more recently, his nightmares were filled with flesh-eating monsters and deadened yellow eyes, and they had become much more frequent than before.

_ I prop myself up on one elbow. There's enough light in the bedroom to see them. My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother's body, their cheeks pressed together... _

Teddy read the next few paragraphs before becoming lost within the book. Teddy rested his head on his hand and sank down lower to the floor, emptying his mind of everything except the story he was reading. And for a moment, only a moment, he was able to forget: forget the monsters, forget his troubles, forget his missing leg, and forget how much he missed his family. 

And to him, that was enough.

* * *

Teddy wasn't even aware of falling asleep until he woke up: sprawled out on the floor with a book pressed against his chest. He blinked sleepily, taking in the shadowy world that surrounded him. Judging by the fact that the room was no longer as bright as it was before, Teddy could only assume that he slept for quite a while. A few hours by the look of things. 

He began to sit up, rubbing his eyes and placing the book back into the bag beside him. He glanced around the room before turning back to the bed, preparing to haul himself back up. It's only when the door creaked open that he froze. 

He looked up in time to see someone walk into the room. It was another woman, obviously older than Beth, but was also quite young, holding a bag in her arms. Maybe it was her sister? At first glance, it was doubtful, but as he looked closer, he could see the resemblance. 

The woman's gaze fell on Teddy sitting on the floor, and she stopped in her tracks, the bag she was holding almost toppling out of her grip. She righted it before striding forward, a kind yet uncertain smile on her face.

"I see you're awake, how ya feeling?" Her voice was soft and uncertain - as if she wasn't all that sure how to talk to him. Despite her apparent uncertainty about him, Teddy couldn't find it in him to relax fully, Harry's warnings about talking to strangers ringing in his mind. 

He ran his fingers through his hair - a habit he picked up from Harry - and slumped back against the bedpost, looking up at the woman with wary eyes. "M'leg hurts." He whispered hoarsely, his voice rough and raspy. He should probably drink some more water.

The woman pursed her lips, a frown forming as she padded into the room. "Yes, well, that's expected. Or at least, that's what Daddy said. He gave ya some pain medication a day ago, but we didn't have much of it left. So we couldn't give ya anything stronger." There was something in her tone, sorrow or pity, as she said this, but Teddy couldn't find it in him to pay much attention to it. He had more important things on his mind.

"Was there no saving it?" He managed to choke out, eyes drifting to his leg, heart in his throat.

The woman gave him a sad smile, a conflicted look on her face. "Maybe if I had found you earlier, Daddy could've done something else, but no, I don't think there was anything he could do. Especially with all the hospitals closin' down." Then, she frowned. "Daddy said you shouldn't be sitting up or moving around yet, ya don't want your leg getting infected after all."

Oops. Well, a bit too late for that. Teddy gave the woman a sheepish smile, tugging the bookbag a little closer to his chest. "Sorry."

"It's fine, I'd probably be the same way If I were in your shoes. Well, shoe." She added, motioning to his leg. 

Teddy couldn't help but laugh a little at this, though it came out slightly strained. "Good to know." Then, he perked up as the rest of her words settled in. "You were the one who found me?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Brought ya back. You were in a pretty bad state too. Daddy thought you would die, but he didn't wanna give up on ya without tryin' first."

Teddy sat up a little, squeezing his eyes shut as he regained his bearings. Then, he looked back at her. "Thank you." 

"Don't mention it," she said, "I did what any decent human being would do. I wasn't about to leave someone out there to die when I could'a helped them. Especially a kid. How old are you, anyway?"

Teddy shrugged. "Ten."

"Really?" Suddenly, a sad look passed over her face, but it was gone as quickly as it came, so Teddy wasn't sure whether he imagined it or not. "That's cool."

"Something wrong?" He asked just in case.

"Just thinkin'," she responded. 

Then, her eyes fell to his leg, and she sighed. "Actually, if ya don't mind me asking," the woman started, her voice sounding curious as she settled down on the carpet beside him, not at all bothered by the fact they were both sitting on the floor instead of the bed right next to them. "What happened to your leg? It looks as if something real awful happened to you, especially since ya got in such a bad state, but we don't know for sure."

Teddy took in a shuddering breath, his mind wandering back to his time in the tree, where he had been sick and in pain regularly. That was a good question. While he had broken his ankle and had that bite, he knew where those came from, what had happened. But he had no idea where his fever came from. Teddy had only gotten sick once in his life before this, and even then, that was when he was four. And while his leg was pretty badly hurt, he wasn't sure what could have possibly warranted cutting off his-

He straightened up, his eyes widening. 

The bite.

The realization crashed over him like a tidal wave, knocking the breath out of him and sending his thoughts wildly astray. The monster had bitten him  _ in the leg,  _ the same leg Beth's father (who was most likely this woman's father) had to cut off, and, soon after that, he got sick with the fever. That couldn't have been a coincidence. Could it? If so, he had no other explanation that could possibly justify it.

"One of the monsters bit me." He said to her, not entirely sure why he was doing so. His arms moved to hug his chest. "It got infected soon after that, it was probably super bad by the time you found me."

Teddy didn't know how it happened, but soon, the ten-year-old found himself telling everything to her. Teddy explained how he had gotten lost from his gran, how he had run into one of the monsters, how Teddy had to climb up a tree to escape it only to get bitten, and how he had run into the forest a few days after. He explained how he had run into the woods looking for someplace to escape the monsters, how he had slowly gotten weaker and weaker before finding that hollow. 

"I lost track of what happened after that," Teddy admitted softly to her, "I'm guessing that a day or two passed before you found me."

The woman looked a little green at his tale, and Teddy came to the realization that he didn't even know her name yet. What did Beth say her name was before? It started with an 'M,' right? Magnolia? Mabel? Maggie? Yes! That was it, Maggie!

"M'sorry, you probably didn't want to hear any of that." He said, his shoulders slumping.

Maggie smiled a little, "no, it's okay. Ya probably needed to get all that out anyway." She paused, a thoughtful look crossing her face. "Are ya hungry? I know that Patricia set out some pears for you, but if you're still hungry..." 

Teddy opened his mouth to speak, but seconds after those words left Maggie's mouth, the door opened again, and a man walked into the room. The first thing that popped into Teddy's mind was that  _ Merlin, he's old,  _ then it was,  _ is this her father?  _ Either way, Teddy's body tensed up immediately at the unfamiliar face. 

The man paused in the doorway, his eyebrows raising at the sight that greeted him. Maggie smiled at him, a bit sheepishly, which only seemed to confirm Teddy's suspicions about the man's identity. 

"Was just comin' to see what was holdin' you up." The man said to Maggie, "guess I got my answer. Good to see your awake, son. How you feelin'?" He directed the last bit toward Teddy, who blinked in surprise at being addressed.

"My leg hurts," Teddy told him, repeating what he said to Maggie a few minutes previous. "And I'm kind of hungry." A bit of an understatement, but a little white lie never hurt anyone. 

"I see," he said, studying Teddy through narrowed eyes, though a small smile formed on his lips. Teddy had a feeling he saw right through his little lie. "I'd be surprised if you weren't hungry, given you were out for a while. Name's Hershel Greene, by the way, and you've already met both my daughters." 

So they  _ were _ sisters. "S'nice to meet you, sir."

He waved his hand dismissively. "None of this,  _ sir  _ business, call me Hershel. It's my name, after all."

Teddy nodded, it seemed he was doing a lot of that lately. "Okay."

"Daddy is somethin' wrong?" Maggie asked, "you look a little tense."

"Do I?" The man then sighed, taking hold of the bag that Maggie had abandoned on the floor. He turned back to Teddy, an apologetic smile playing at his lips.

"I know your probably not going to like this, but I need to take a look at your leg." Before Teddy could protest, Hershel continued, "I just need to check on your leg. To clean the wound and change the bandages to prevent an infection." He explained, meeting Teddy's eyes, a sad look on his face. "I'm going to be honest with you, it's not going to be pleasant."

Oh no, he didn't like the sound of that. Teddy eyed the bag uncertainly, wondering if it was Hershel's medical bag. It probably was, seeing as he wasn't carrying anything else with him. Why did he have Maggie take it in?

His gaze returned to Hershel, and he nodded hesitantly. "O...okay." 

Hershel nodded toward where he sat on the floor, and if Teddy didn't know any better, he would say that the man looked amused, "might be a little easier if you were back on the bed." 

Teddy smiled sheepishly, his face turning red. After a few moments of struggling, he managed to pull himself back onto the bed. When up, Teddy paused, before quickly snatching the book bag and hauling it onto the bed with him. He scoot back against the pillows, holding the bag to his chest. 

Hershel walked around the bed and pulled up a chair so he could sit beside Teddy, setting his medical bag on the bedside table where Teddy had previously found the can of pears. Maggie hovered over him, her brows furrowed in thought.

"Should I go?" She asked. 

Hershel hesitated before nodding. "Yes, but do me a favor and heat up some of the soup from last night for Teddy, he needs more to eat than pears if he's going to regain his strength." Teddy laughed a little at this. 

Maggie nodded and, with one last glance at Teddy, left. Teddy watched her go, a nervous feeling in his stomach. A part of him had wanted her to stay. He didn't know either of them all that much, but either way, Teddy would have preferred to have someone else in the room with him. Especially since Teddy was going to be seeing what's left off his amputated leg for the first time, and he knew that it wasn't going to be fun. 

Teddy shifted, moving the blankets. "How are you going to clean it?" Did they put soap on it or something? Oh sue him, he didn't know shit about muggle healing techniques. 

Hershel began unwrapping the bandages around his leg. "I'm going to be applying some antiseptic to it. We're going to have to do this every twelve or so hours until the wound closes." He said. "To keep it from getting infected."

"Oh... um, okay." Teddy paused, a thought coming into mind. "You said it's going to hurt a lot, but do you have anything that could help?"

Hershel paused in unwrapping the bandages, reaching down and unzipping his bag, rummaging around for a few moments. He took out a small bottle and tapped a few pills into Teddy's hand. "Here, painkillers," he explained. "They'll take a little while to take affect, but they should do the trick." 

"How much does it usually hurt?" Teddy asked, taking the pills. He knew it would probably be best if he didn't know, but he was curious.  _ I guess there is a reason people say curiosity killed the cat. _

"I wouldn't be able to say, as I've never lost a leg before," Hershel replied, and Teddy couldn't help the small laugh that bubbled from his lips. "It usually depends on the size and depth of the wound, but no matter what, it always hurts." 

"Okay, but uh, is there going to be a lot of, well, y'know," Teddy gestured to his leg, "blood?" 

"There shouldn't be," he said. "Now, before I apply this, tell me, how does your leg feel?"

Teddy shrugged. "Well, it hurts, but not as much as before. It's also kind of... tingly? Is that normal?" 

"Perfectly normal," Hershel assured him. "If your leg feels like its asleep, or tingly as you put it, that means there isn't any blood flowing there. Which will make this a little easier for you." He paused, "as for the pain, well, that's most likely the nerve damage, you did just lose your leg, after all."

Teddy let out a shaky breath as Hershel returned to unwrapping the bandages. "okay... good." 

Moments later, the smell of rotten blood wafted into the air, and Teddy felt his heart jump to his throat.

He'd smelled that before, the town he had been in practically reeked of it. The realization dawned on him moments later.

He smelled like one of the monsters.

The last of the bandages were pulled away, and Teddy looked away as soon as he caught a glimpse of it. The wound was red, puffy, and altogether not very pleasant to look at, stitches that Teddy hadn't even realized were there snaked in and out of the flesh, holding the wound closed. Teddy felt sick to his stomach, but that also could just be the lack of food and water speaking.

Hershel began wetting a rag he pulled from his bag with antiseptic. When done, he glanced up at Teddy. "I'm going to start cleaning it. Are you ready?"

No, he wasn't, but they were going to have to do this either way so he might as well suck it up and get it over with. "Y..yeah, I guess I am."

Hershel looked at him for a long moment. "Do you want something to bite down on?" 

He nodded, and Hershel handed him a small towel. Which Teddy gratefully took.

The moment the cloth touched his leg - or stump, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to call it - pain shot up his body, and he was only just able to bite back a cry of pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the silent stream of tears that rapidly began running down his face. He breathed in through his nose, his teeth clenched and his arms tightening around the backpack as the man worked.

His teeth ground into the towel, biting down into the cloth with so much pressure he was surprised his teeth didn't snap. He was hardly aware of what Hershel was doing, and he didn't really want to see. But, after what felt like forever, it was over. His body slacked in relief, and Teddy pried open one eye as Hershel began wrapping his leg in fresh bandages.

Teddy sank down into the bed, wiping the tears from his eyes and trying to regain control of his breathing. Which was much harder than it sounded.

Hershel took a step back, a pleased expression on his face. "The good news is, your leg isn't infected, and the stitches seem to be holding up well."

"What's the bad news?" Teddy inquired, fidgeting nervously.

"The bad news is that it is a bit of swelling, but that should die down within a few days, and, if all goes well, the wound will have completely closed in around one or two months." A contemplative expression crossed his face. "And maybe if your careful, you could try moving around again within a week, so long as you don't put too much strain on your leg that could agitate it or cause it to bleed that is." 

Hershel then gave him a stern look. "Which means no more crawling all over the floor." 

Teddy gave him a sheepish grin, which quickly turned to a giant smile as the rest of the old man's words sunk in. The idea of being able to walk again immediately boosted his mood. And despite the fact he was now being forced into staying in bed, at least for the time being, it was good to know he wouldn't be stuck in it forever. 

Hershel stood back up, putting his supplies back in his bag before turning to Teddy. "I understand that this must be hard for you, Teddy, especially at such a young age. But as long as we keep an eye on your leg and make sure nothing goes wrong, I think you'll make a full recovery."

"Thank you," Teddy said, his voice small. "I really appreciate it."

"Don't mention it, son," Hershel said. "It's the least I can do, especially in a time like this." 

Maggie chose that time to walk back in with a bowl of soup in hand. She paused in the doorway, glancing toward Teddy before looking to her father. "You all done?" 

"For now," Hershel then nodded toward Teddy. "I'll be back tomorrow, maybe sooner. Holler if you need anything." 

He left, and Teddy's gaze turned to Maggie, who shuffled uncomfortably in the doorway. She rubbed the back of her neck nervously, balancing the bowl in her other hand. 

She cleared her throat to fill the sudden silence, holding out the bowl to him with a small grin. "So," she started, "you hungry?"

Teddy couldn't help it, he grinned back.


	7. Incoming

Maggie isn't grinning anymore. Neither is Teddy for that matter, but that's because the fever he had initially thought was long gone had come back two days later with a fiery vengeance, and he can barely even see straight as it is. The last thing Teddy remembers seeing before his vision blanked out was the worried look on Hershel's face as soon as the man realized what was going on. 

The fever isn't as bad as it had been before, but it isn't much better, either. Teddy knows that if he doesn't get better soon, there is a high possibility that he will die. If they had access to more medicine, potions, or a hospital, Teddy wouldn't be as worried as he currently is. 

But they don't have access to a hospital. Maggie said so herself. They had all closed down while Teddy had been passed out. Secondly, these people were muggles, they didn't have access to potions that could help. Heck, they didn't even know that they existed. And the medicine the Greene's have is limited; eventually, it's going to run out, and they would be on their own. 

"Teddy, you need to drink some water if you want to get better," Hershel said gently, just like he'd said a week before.

Teddy made a pained noise in the back of his throat, moving his head away from the water Hershel was trying to get him to drink. "Don't wanna." He mumbled into the pillow. "M'just gonna throw it back up anyway."

It had been a week since he woke up, three weeks since he had lost his leg, a month since the world ended. It had been four months since Teddy had last seen his family: since he'd last hugged his godfather, last played with Victoire, last made faces at James and his cousins, and last read with Aunt Hermione. 

He didn't even know if his gran was alive or if the same thing was happening back in England. Is everyone alright? Were they safe in the magical world? Were they all together? He didn't know, and there isn't much he can do in his current situation. Even if he did have both legs and didn't have this fever, how would he be able to get back to England? His mind wanders to all of his little cousins back at home, they may not be blood-related, but they were his family. He didn't want to imagine the monsters getting their hands on any of them.

Then, there was Harry. Did he know what was happening in America? Was he worried about Teddy? Had he even thought of him? Was he even alive? Teddy's stomach churns at the thought. He couldn't imagine a world that Harry wasn't in. For all his life, Harry had been there with him, and now that he wasn't... Teddy didn't know what to do. Didn't know what he _could_ do.

Teddy felt so useless. The frustration and hopelessness of the entire situation are threatening to empower him. He hates feeling useless. _But,_ he thinks resentfully, _it seems like that's something that I'm going to have to get used to._ Especially since he was going to stay here. _IF_ Hershel let him stay here, or was he just going to kick him out? Leave him to get devoured by monsters? Teddy didn't know the man well enough to try and predict what he was going to do. Teddy didn't like thinking about it much either. 

Teddy knows it was okay to cry about it - and he kind of wants too - but he just can't find the energy to do so. Teddy feels as if he had left whatever emotions he had about the whole thing back in that monster-infested town. Teddy hadn't cried once since the first night in the woods - curled up into a ball and sobbing hysterically because of how horrible everything was and still is. Nobody had asked if he was okay emotionally - only physically - and Teddy kept trying to not think about what might've happened if Maggie hadn't found him.

It seemed as if the world had it out for him. Apparently, taking his parents away hadn't been enough, so it had to try again. And boy did it succeed. First, there was the whole world ending with monsters eating people, then he lost his leg, and now he was sick. (Hershel said it was some form of the flu, and if Teddy's being honest, it sucked - _a lot.)_

"Would you prefer taking medicine without any water?" Hershel asked, putting the water bottle back under his nose. Teddy made a sound of protest but complied and swallowed a few small gulps. He made a face soon after.

"That medicine tastes like shit," Teddy said with a scowl, adjusting the blanket and burrowing his nose further into the warmth. Not that it helps much, he's still cold.

Hershel gives him a disapproving look at his use of curse words, and Teddy hears a faint snort of amusement from where Maggie stands in the corner of the room. Teddy huffs, making an annoyed face as a stray curl falls in front of his eyes.

He could've just morphed it shorter and hope that Hershel didn't notice - which he doubted would work because that man was very observant - but his abilities hadn't really been cooperating with him as of late. In fact, Teddy didn't think he had been able to morph since he had gotten bitten. He's really hoping it's just a temporary thing, but with his luck, he doubts it. 

"Language, young man." Hershel scolded, "just because you're sick doesn't give you a reason to swear." Judging by the sheepish look on Maggie's face at her father's words, Teddy has a feeling it isn't the first time Hershel's had to say something like this.

"Sorry," Teddy mumbled, wincing at the shock of pain that shoots through his throat. "It does taste like shit, though."

Maggie laughs, and Hershel frowns, giving her a sharp look before turning back to Teddy.

"You need to drink it," Hershel told him, and Teddy nods quietly. 

He couldn't blame the man for being worried. Teddy had been in a bad state for the first few days, still was really, with the fever causing him to drift in and out of consciousness from time to time. Teddy could've sworn he threw up blood at one point, but he didn't dare ask. The man had enough troubles at this point. 

"Mkay," Teddy responded, his voice slurred. Darkness had begun clawing once more at his mind, and he's already feeling himself begin to fall back into unconsciousness once more.

A few minutes later, after he had both the medicine and the water, that was just what he did.

* * *

Three weeks passed, and things were only slightly better.

Teddy was barely keeping it together at this point. He was regularly on the verge of bursting into tears, he wants to scream. His leg is in a non-stop, overwhelming pain, and it had been from the moment Teddy wakes each morning. His head still aches terribly, he was dizzy, tired, and his whole body was sore. And, to top it all off, he misses his family. And all Teddy wants is to go back home. And everything hurts. And-

He sighs, staring up at the ceiling in his boredom. Hershel had left strict instructions that he was not to leave the bed (not that he could,) and so, Teddy was left with only a few books and his thoughts. He's already managed to finish most of the books, and there was plenty more left. But he's beginning to feel restless, he didn't want to just sit there and _read._

But in the few weeks that he'd been awake, that seemed to be all he _was_ doing.

"Oh, good. Your up!"

Maggie's loud, surprised voice sounds from the directions of the doorway, tearing him out of his thoughts. Teddy looks up, brushing away any stray tears that might still be on his face before turning to the door in time to see Maggie step into the room, smiling gleefully at him with a hand tucked behind her back. 

Teddy blinks, a bit startled at this turn of events. "Yeah, I'm awake. Uh, why is that good, exactly?" He'd much rather be asleep. At least then he wouldn't have to deal with the continuous pounding in his head that makes him want to scream. 

"Oh, no reason." The woman chirped, not at all bothered by his confusion. Teddy leans backward, a bit set off by her cheerfulness. Did Beth possess Maggie or something? Because this was not normal Maggie behavior. Though, granted, he's only really known her for a few weeks. So who was he to judge.

She strides forward, plopping herself down on the bed and dropping whatever it was she was holding at her feet. Just out of Teddy's view, much to his irritation. "Well, that's a lie. There is a reason." She said, clapping her hands together excitedly. "I got something for you."

"Really? What is it?" Teddy asked, both surprised and very curious. Also somewhat wary.

"Ta-da!" Maggie announced, bringing her gift out with an embellished wave. 

It takes Teddy a few seconds to realize what she's showing him, and another few to react.

"Crutches?" 

"Yup!" She replied, looking very pleased with herself. "Just for you! Otis and Patricia thought ya might want them." Teddy nods, that sounds about right. He's only met the two briefly, but the couple seems like the kind of people to do something like that. 

"Otis was actually the one who made them." Maggie continues. "Did it when you first came because he thought you might have appreciated it when you woke up. Didn't have the chance to give them to you before, as you were sick, so here it is now. May be a bit big for you, as we didn't know your exact measurements, but it's better than nothing, right?"

Teddy glances up at her before reaching out and taking them both hesitantly, gripping the material tightly as he brings them into his lap. Unlike most crutches he's seen - which wasn't a whole lot - it was made of wood instead of metal. But he supposed that was a given, seeing as they were handmade. The wood itself was a dark shade of brown, and its surface was smooth and even. Teddy didn't know measurements well, much less his, but by the looks of it, Maggie was right. It did look a little big for him, but not too much that it was unusable. He ran a hand over the wood, admiring the feel. Otis had clearly put a ton of effort into it.

Teddy hates them immediately.

He has nothing against Otis and Patricia. Or Maggie, for that matter. But the loathing still rose up inside him like vomit, churning and twisting in his gut steadily growing more violent the longer he stares at the crutches. They were nothing but a dumb reminder that he was never going to be able to walk again, that he was no longer whole. He would forever have to rely on a stupid piece of wood to be able to move around, and it wouldn't even be walking, it would be limping. How would he be able to run from the monsters if he isn't able to run?

But his loathing passes as quickly as it came, instead replaced with feelings of guilt and grief. These people didn't even know him all that well, had only really known him for a week, but they had saved his life multiple times. Not only that, but they were now giving him a way of moving around. This was his life now, and unless he wanted to be a brat and reject the gift while wallowing in his misery, he has to get used to it. He has no right to be angry at them. Maggie obviously didn't mean any harm by it. In fact, if what she says is the truth, Otis clearly put a lot of thought and effort into making them. All while Teddy hadn't even thought of anything like it yet. Without even realizing it, his eyes begin to burn, and tears soon start falling.

A look of alarm passes over Maggie's face. "Shit, do you not like them? Daddy told me it might be a little too soon and that you needed to adjust because you're still getting better, but I thought-"

"No! No, it's not that!" Teddy quickly assured her, hurriedly beginning to rub at his eyes in an attempt to wipe away the tears. "I really appreciate it. I just got a little bit emotional, I guess... that's all."

Maggie's shoulders slump in relief, "Oh, good, for a second there, I thought that I upset you or something." She gives Teddy a half-hearted smile. "Daddy was worried that it would be a little too soon to get you to start movin' around. But I thought that, hey, it means you'll be up and movin' quicker, won't it? And who knows, maybe we'll be able to get you some sort of prosthetic once this thing blows over." 

_Once this thing blows over._ Teddy isn't a negative person, the opposite really, but he didn't really think that the whole thing would be blowing over at all. Or at least, not anytime soon. Still, the idea of being able to walk again brings a small smile to his face. "Thank you... this-this means a lot. Really!"

"I'm glad." She says with a smile. "But you should really thank Otis, he was the one who made them, after all." 

"I will," Teddy assures her, "but still, thank you. I can't wait to start using them! I'm starting to go nuts from just laying here all day."

Maggie grinned, "I don't know how you can stand it, I would've gone nuts long ago." Then, she shrugs. "As soon as this fever goes down, you can give it a go. Daddy thinks you should be fine in a few days, but we don't want to push it."

"Thank M-" Teddy catches himself quickly. "Thank God."

If Maggie notices his slipup, she doesn't say anything about it. "I should probably get goin' now, Daddy wants me to help feed the animals. You should try to get some rest. Someone'll bring you some dinner in a few hours, hope ya don't mind more soup."

Teddy makes a face but complies and pulls his blanket back up to his neck and snuggling into the bed, his heart hammering with excitement. 

Not even his fever, his leg, or the pounding in his head could bring him down at this rate. As hard as the last month (almost two) has been, the thought of being able to walk again after all of it outweighed any fear or sadness he still harbored for the coming future. The only thing he has to worry about is getting over his fever so he can get started. He's still worried about his family and if he'll find them again, but he knew that, as of now, he was safe, and that itself was enough.

After a few minutes of tossing and turning, Teddy manages to drift off into sleep.

* * *

Teddy leaned on one of the walls, gripping his crutches tightly. He was breathing heavily, his heart pounding and his arms aching as he struggled to catch his breath. 

It was a slow going process, but thanks to the crutches Otis had made him, Teddy was now able to make his way - albeit slowly - around the living room. It was a tiring process, especially since he hadn't moved around much in a little over two months, but it was worth it.

The crutches were a little hard to use, as he was still getting used to them, and Teddy couldn't use them for long, but he was slowly building up his endurance as time went on. It would take time, but Teddy thought it would be worth it. Sure, he didn't move too quickly, but he didn't mind too much. Anything was better than sitting around all day doing nothing. 

"Hell yeah! Go, Teddy!" Maggie cheered from her spot on the couch. Beth, who was seated next to her, shot him a thumbs up, her lips curving up into a supportive grin.

Teddy snorted in amusement, "never took you for a cheerleader, Greene." he teased, still somewhat breathless. Though despite his teasing, he was unable to keep the gleeful smile off of his face. "Always thankful for the support, though." 

Maggie flipped him off, only to be harshly elbowed in the gut by her sister. "Ow! What was that for?"

Beth simply rolled her eyes, and Teddy snickered, amused at their antics. It reminded him somewhat of how his aunts and uncles back home would bicker over the weirdest things. Once Ginny and Uncle Ron got in an argument about how to eat tacos and wouldn't speak to each other for weeks, and it was _still_ a sore subject for them even three years later.

"How are those crutches workin' for you, Teddy?" Otis asked from where he stood in the hall. 

"Pretty good," Teddy responded, "They make my arms sore - but thats my only complaint!" He added, grinning widely.

"Well, don't push yourself too hard," Hershel reminded, appearing from behind the larger man. "You're still sick, remember? And we don't need you aggravatin' your wound either, the last thing we need is for it to start bleeding again."

"I know, I know. But I'll be careful, I promise!" Teddy assured him, pushing himself off the wall and beginning another lap. "Just let me do a few more laps, please!" Teddy really didn't want to sit back down again, but he knew that he would have to eventually.

"Oh, there's no need to worry, Hershel. Teddy's clearly got it." Patricia commented. "He's been sittin' around doing nothin' all day. Obviously he's going to be a little reluctant to sit back down. I say you should let him have his fun."

Teddy grinned at this, and Hershel merely shook his head, an exasperated sigh escaping from him. "Fine, but if you end up collapsin' later from exhaustion, don't say I didn't warn you."

Teddy just beamed. (And he did end up collapsing later, but it was on the couch, so he was fine.)

* * *

The next week passed by slowly for Teddy.

He spent most of his time wandering around the house with his crutches. He went into the living room, the kitchen, the guest bedroom, the dining room, and he was even allowed onto the porch occasionally as long as he had someone with him. He didn't try going up the stairs though, he'd like to not fall on his face again, thank you very much. 

It was getting easier to move around as time went on, and he was growing faster too. Now, of course, he wasn't winning any races anytime soon, but he was confident that he could outrun any monsters if the situation ever arose. Then again, considering that the monsters moved at a snail's pace that wasn't too surprising.

When he wasn't using his crutches, he was playing board games with Beth or Maggie, listening to Jimmy’s jokes, and reading books when none of them were available. He ended up finishing The Hunger Games pretty quickly and had moved onto some of the other books in the house. By the time four days had passed, Teddy finished a little over half of the books in the house. 

With every day, his leg hurt a little less, and there were even moments where he would forget he was missing a limb in the first place. Each time Hershel cleaned his stump, it would hurt a little less than before, and it always ended with Hershel looking very pleased with his apparent healing. His fever was mostly gone, his leg had yet to get infected, and the more the wound closed, it became less likely that it would ever happen. 

Of course, that didn't mean Teddy was totally out of the dangerzone yet. If he got another fever or his wound reopened, there was a high possibility he wouldn't make it through again. 

Teddy wasn't doing to good mentally, either, as much as he'd like to deny it. There would be moments where he would just shut down and not talk to anyone, times where he would be on the verge of a panic attack after a nightmare or when thinking about the fate of his family. He kept getting images of each of them being torn apart by the monsters, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn't block them out. 

But besides those things, life at the farm was actually quite peaceful. Of course, there was the occasional stray monster, but Teddy only saw them from a distance, and he never hung around long enough to watch Maggie or Otis get rid of them. He'd had enough of monsters in the past two months, thank you very much. 

Teddy flopped down onto the couch, his crutches tumbling onto the carpet as he fought to catch his breath. After a few seconds, he began to squirm around, trying to find a comfortable spot to lie on. Teddy attempted a few positions before ending up with his head hanging off the end of the couch and his legs thrown up on the armrest in what Ginny liked to call this his cat position, though he wasn't all that sure why.

Beth walked in a few moments later, a book in hand. She stopped in her tracks, raising a brow at the image in front of her. Teddy didn't really know why Beth seemed so surprised. You'd think after knowing him for over a month, she'd have grown used to finding him in odd positions. Apparently not.

"You good?" She asked, not bothering to hide the amusement in her tone.

"Mhm," Teddy hummed, "just catchin' my breath."

Beth took a seat beside him, and Teddy shifted as the couch sank under her weight. 

"Do you know where Otis is?" Beth asked, brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I wanted to ask him something, but I can't find him anywhere."

"Uh," Teddy furrowed his brow, wrinkling his nose as he thought about it, "he went out half an hour ago, said he was going huntin' or something."

"Oh, I'll wait for him then." Beth glanced behind her before taking something out from behind her back.

Teddy sat up, blowing a strand of hair out of his eyes and moving into a normal sitting position. "Is that a book?"

She let out a huff of laughter. "Yup, Maggie found it in town yesterday. Said something about using it for our 'book club,'" she rolled her eyes at this. 

Teddy grinned. Their 'book club,' as Maggie called it, was this fun little thing they had started while Teddy was still confined to the bed. Beth would bring in one of the books from the bookshelves in her room, and she and Teddy would take turns reading the book that she chose. Usually, it was Beth who read, but occasionally Teddy would take a turn. He had a lot of fun listening to her read, it reminded him of the times he read with Aunt Hermione back at home. 

"What's it called?" 

"Ever heard of _Old Yeller?_ " Beth asked, holding the book in front of his face. Teddy took it curiously, flipping through the pages. 

"No," Teddy responded, "what's it about?" 

"A boy and a dog," Beth explained, "it takes place sometime during the late 1860s. I think you'll like it."

Teddy handed the book back to her, and after getting settled in, she started to read. As expected, Teddy quickly got pulled into the story. He closed his eyes, resting his head on Beth's shoulder and emptying his mind of everything except the story she was reading.

Teddy eventually ended up dozing off, his sleep, for once void of nightmares. He woke up again halfway through the story, though he kept his eyes closed as Beth read. He had lost track of what was going on due to his nap, but it was enough to just listen. 

He didn't know how much time passed, but after a while, Beth closed the book, the pages ruffling as she folded the top of the page to save their spot. Teddy opened his eyes wearily, glancing around the room. Darkness had begun to settle in the small living room, and through the living room window, Teddy could see the oranges and yellows in the sky as the sun slowly began its descent, though it was still fairly light out.

He sat up after a few moments, rubbing his eyes to try and rid himself of his drowsiness. 

"Have a nice nap?" Beth said teasingly.

"Yup," Teddy replied, "how long was I asleep for?"

She shrugged. "Dunno, thirty minutes?" 

Teddy hummed in response, and they sat there in silence for a few more moments. Beth sighed, breaking the silence, and turned to him.

"You need to take a break every once in a while." 

Teddy glanced up at her, a confused expression crossing his face. Where did this come from? "What?"

"With the crutches, you don't need to work yourself so hard with them." Beth said. "You know that, right?"

"Would be kind of hard not to, seeing as your Dad likes reminding me of that a hundred times a day," Teddy replied, his voice growing a tad defensive, "I'm fine, Beth, I'm not stupid. I just want to get better." _And somehow find my family again._ His mind whispered.

"Still," she said softly, "you shouldn't overdo it, you could hurt yourself. And that's the last thing we need."

Teddy let out a defeated sigh, "I know. I just... need to do something, y'know? Don't get me wrong, I love reading. It just gets a little repetitive after a while."

Beth gave him a sad smile, and Teddy glanced away. He knew she was right, as much as he wished she wasn't. But he couldn't help it, he felt so vulnerable. So useless. And he hated that.

"Just try to not go so hard on yourself, please?" Beth begged. "I can't see another person die."

A thread of guilt formed in his stomach and Teddy felt about ready to kick himself. He opened his mouth to respond - to apologize or agree, he didn’t know - but before the words manage to leave his mouth, the door slammed open with a loud bang, and Maggie dashed in, looking noticeably alarmed.

Beth sat up, a worried expression appearing on her face. “Maggie, what’s wrong? Is everything alright?” 

Maggie’s eyes land on the two of them sitting on the couch. Quickly, she shook her head.

“One of you needs to go get Daddy, we got injured incoming."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here is another early chapter. Actually, it's most likely going to be the last for one or two weeks, I'm probably not going to be able to publish any chapters next week, or the week after that. I'm going to be going on a trip, so I'm not going to have much time to write. So if no chapters are out by next friday, that's why.


	8. Things are Changing

Teddy lay curled up at the top of the stairs, waiting with bated breath as he tried to catch the faint snippets of conversation that came from downstairs.

Patricia had practically forced him upstairs when she saw the man run up to the house with his injured son in his arms. Teddy didn't really know why, but because of it, he had little to no idea what was going on or who these people were. The only thing Teddy knew for sure was that Otis had accidentally shot the other boy while hunting. Now he was hanging around upstairs while everyone else rushed around trying to keep the kid alive, and he was unable to help in any way. 

He can hear the kid start screaming from where he sat, and the noise caused him to flinch. He had become well acquainted with the sound of screaming over the past two months, but it never really became any easier to hear it. If anything, it only got worse. The fact that the one doing the screaming was a kid around his age didn't make things any easier. It only served in reminding him of how dangerous this world could be, especially now. 

The kid stopped screaming.

Teddy's body tensed up, and his heart jumped into his throat as he waited. He half expected to hear the sound of the man screaming upon realizing his boy didn't make it. But instead, he hears the sound of quiet conversation and a door slamming open. 

A feeling of uneasiness and extreme uncertainty washed over him, and Teddy forced himself to his feet, using the wall to steady himself as he gathered his crutches. He'd just managed to get one of them under his arm when Otis and another man - an unfamiliar one - come into view, guns and bags in hand. They seemed to be conversing with one another, but Teddy was unable to discern any words of what they were saying. 

"Otis?" He called out after a few seconds, his voice small. "What's goin' on?"

The two men jump and whirl around, their eyes landing on where he stood, still at the top of the stairs. Teddy tensed up as the unfamiliar man stared at him, an indescribable look in his eyes. Then, his gaze lands on the crutches, and then the missing leg, and his eyes widen. Teddy looked away from him, turning his attention to Otis, not wanting to see the other man's pity. 

Otis, once he got over his surprise, cleared his throat. "You saw the boy that man brought in, yeah?" When Teddy nodded, he continued. "Well, he's hurt. Got shot in the stomach. Me and Shane here," he motioned to the man beside him, "are going on a supply run into town, so Hershel can help him." There's a guilty look on his face as he says this, but Teddy doesn't pry into that. He already has a pretty good idea as to why Otis looked that way.

"You'll be careful?" Teddy couldn't help but ask, a thread of nervousness forming in his stomach. He liked Otis, even if he hadn't known him for all that long, and Teddy knew all too well how dangerous runs could be. Especially if they were in town. Teddy personally hasn't been into town since he had escaped from it, but he knows that Maggie has been there numerous times. 

Otis seemed to hesitate before nodding. "Of course, kid." 

* * *

He wasn't.

Although Otis had gone on the run to the local high school to get the supplies Hershel needed, he hadn't been able to make it back. Shane had returned, eyes wide and hands shaking, just in time with the medical supplies in hand, claiming that Otis had been taken down by the dead. To Teddy, it was only a kinder way of saying that Otis had been eaten alive, torn apart by the empty shells of former human beings. Teddy had seen enough of those types of deaths to know that they weren't pleasant. That it was one of the most painful deaths to experience. 

But he knew that Hershel, Beth, and Maggie would say differently. They still saw the monsters as people, despite Teddy's various attempts trying to convince them otherwise. Hershel had claimed every time that they were sick and wouldn't listen to Teddy when he tried to say otherwise. He had given up trying to convince them after a week, but it didn't stop him from dropping small hints. Didn't stop him from noticing the overwhelming smell of rot that emanated from the barn. He knew they kept monsters in there. Knew they still held hope that they could eventually cure them. Teddy didn't share that hope, but he chose to keep it to himself. 

The mourning for Otis had been put on a pause, seeing as the other kid's surgery was the main priority. From what Teddy managed to gather, the procedure went pretty well. Or at least, as well as it could've gone under these circumstances. While the boy seemed to be doing well, he remained unconscious for the time being. Teddy was just thankful that Otis's sacrifice wasn't in vain.

Teddy sighed, crossing his arms and leaning back into his chair. The sun was hanging high in the sky, and Teddy was sitting on the porch of the Greene family farm watching in boredom as the other group milled around. 

So much had happened in the past day, it was kind of hard to believe that things could change so quickly.

He blinked, trying to regain his bearings. A phantom pain shot up his leg, and Teddy grimaced. 

Teddy didn't quite know what to make of the new group that had come to Hershel's farm only a few hours ago. Hershel had practically confined both him and Beth inside the house, so he hadn't really gotten around to interacting with any of them. The closest he had gotten to one of them was when Mr. Grimes had come running up to the farm with his son (What was his name again? Teddy couldn't remember.) And even then, he had only been out there for a few moments before Patricia practically forced him back inside the house.

The other group of survivors had set up camp under a collection of trees a little way away from the house. An old man and a blonde woman were perched on top of the RV, seemingly arguing about something as they kept watch. Maggie had gone off into town with another one of the men in this group. Another woman was sitting alone by a tree, staring out into the forest with her back turned to everyone else, her shoulders hunched and fingers clasped together. If Teddy's memory served him correctly, her daughter was lost in those woods. 

He knew all too well how that felt. He could only imagine how scared that girl was, all alone like that.

His hand twitched, fingers curving around the wooden handle of one of his crutches as he averted his gaze to his lap, trying to keep the sun's slowly brightening glare out of his eyes. He knew he should probably head back inside, but what the hell was he supposed to do in there? Read more books? Teddy felt that if he looked at one more book that he was going to scream. He loved books, he really did, but a kid could only take so much of them before they begin to go insane. He could go talk to Beth, but she was holed away in her room, and he really didn't want to make the trek up and down the stairs with only one leg. Teddy had done enough of that yesterday.

Speaking of which, before yesterday, he probably would have gone to talk to Otis, which was something the man was always happy to do. But now, he couldn't even do that. Because currently, Otis was lying somewhere by the old school in town torn into teeny-tiny pieces since the monsters had ripped him to shreds the night before. Or maybe he was a monster too, it was one or the other, and those were things that Teddy did not like to think about.

It was something that Teddy did not know what to feel about either. Teddy liked Otis but personally did not know much about the man. He knew that Otis loved kids, but never had any of his own despite wanting them. That the man saw Maggie and Beth as the nieces - or daughters - he never had. But besides that, Teddy knew next to nothing about the man. He still grieved, but not as much as the Greene's - who had known him for years - had. Teddy didn't even want to imagine how hard Patricia was taking it.

Voices echo out from the door, and seconds later, Mr. and Mrs. Grimes emerged from the doorway, talking in hushed voices to one another about something that Teddy couldn't care less about. They don't seem to notice him as they near. Simply walking right past him, making their way down the porch steps and toward their group. Teddy doesn't bother calling out.

He watched them walk off before returning his sights on the rest of the group, most of which hadn't moved. It was currently the most entertaining thing he could do at the moment, and even then, it was still rather dull.

His head fell back onto the chair, looking out into the bright, sunny sky. Teddy shifted in his seat, trying to relieve the stiffness in his body. He's feeling both antsy and a bit uneasy, although he's not all that sure why. It could just be the unusual amount of people on the farm at the moment. Teddy hadn't been around this many people before everything started, so he could just be anxious because of that.

When his boredom finally becomes too much, Teddy wedged his crutches under his arms and forced himself to his feet once more. Swallowing down the lump of nerves in his throat, he nudged open the door with a crutch, somewhat pleased to find that Mr. and Mrs. Grimes hadn’t closed it entirely, before hobbling inside and relishing in the feel of cold air hitting his face. He didn't think he could ever get used to how hot it could get in Georgia. 

He paused in the doorway, unsure of where to go. He glanced toward the direction of his former room, the one currently being occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Grimes's son, and gnawed at his lip, and idea coming to mind.

He was almost a hundred percent sure that the boy was probably still asleep, and that he shouldn't disturb him. But Teddy hadn't seen another kid his age in what felt like forever, the idea of talking to someone his age again... 

Teddy's curiosity, once again, got the best of him, and he ended up making his way into the room. He paused in the open doorway, craning his head to try and get a good glimpse. From what he could see, the boy was short, only a little taller than Teddy was now, with dark brown hair tucked into a sheriff's hat that looked way too big for his head. If Teddy was remembering things correctly, that hat had been on his father's head when he ran up to the farm.

The boy was asleep by the looks of it. His arms were thrown out on the bed, his chest rising and falling with every breath. His eyebrows were pulled together, his mouth moving with soundless words. If Teddy didn't know any better, he wouldn't be able to guess that he had just been shot. This was a far cry from the bloody looking boy he saw mere hours ago, the one that Hershel thought wouldn't make it. 

It was only when he saw the tears staining his lashes that Teddy realized that he was having a nightmare. 

Teddy's eyes went wide, and his body went rigid until he was completely frozen in the doorway. 

He was quite familiar with nightmares. He had them pretty much every night since this all had started. Even before Teddy came to America, he had them. But whenever he did, he would wake up wrapped up in Harry or Ginny's gentle embrace. They would shush him and run their hand through his hair until he fell asleep again. Occasionally, they would even sing to him. (Harry was really good at it too!)

The boy cried out in his sleep, and Teddy moved forward until he was standing at the foot of the bed. 

He stared at the boy for a long moment, trying to decide what he should do. If Teddy was the one having the nightmare, he'd want to be woken up as soon as possible. But he didn't know this boy whatsoever, maybe he wouldn't like being woken up. 

Teddy couldn't imagine someone not wanting to be woken from a nightmare. They were scary, and if it were Teddy, he would want them to be over as quick as possible. 

Finally making his decision, Teddy perched himself on the end of the bed, resting his crutches down on the floor before crawling forward. He stopped when he was hovering over the boy, and, for a moment, he hesitated. The moment was quick, however, and with trembling hands, he grabbed the boy by the shoulders and began shaking him gently, taking care not to cause any harm to the healing wound in his stomach. Hershel would freak out if he saw Teddy doing this. 

After a few seconds, the boy's eyes snapped open, and Teddy was soon faced with the most beautiful eyes he ever laid eyes on. A pair of crystal blue eyes stared right up at him, and Teddy jumped back, a gasp tearing itself from his throat and an embarrassed blush staining his cheeks.

"S-sorry!" He squeaked out. "I didn't mean to wake you! Well, I mean, I did. But, uh... you were having a nightmare! And I just thought that…” Teddy shook his head, he was rambling again. “M’sorry!”

The boy stared at Teddy with wide eyes before taking in a shaky breath, his eyes fluttering shut.

"It's fine." The boy mumbled, reopening his eyes and bringing himself into a sitting position. A flash of pain crossed his face, and a small hiss escaped his lips. Teddy couldn't help but cringe. 

Teddy frowned a little, his brows furrowing. "I don't think you should be sitting up, your hurt, remember?" He then cocked his head to the side, a small grin forming on his face. "I'm Teddy, by the way, Teddy Lupin!"

"I'm Carl," he responded, reaching a hand to rub the sleep from his eyes, "and uh, I'm not mad at you, for waking me up, I mean." He then glanced around, a curious expression crossing his face. "What time is it? Where is everyone?"

Teddy shrugged. "Dunno, sometime in the morning, I'm guessing." He looked toward the doorway before returning his gaze back to Carl. "Your mom and dad just left the house, around a minute or two before I came in. And the rest of your group is outside."

"Oh," a hopeful expression then passed over his face, "have they found Sophia yet?"

Sophia? Teddy frowned, that was the girl who got lost in the woods, right? 

Teddy shook his head, "no, they haven't," and upon seeing the crestfallen look on Carl's face added, "they're still looking, though!"

"I should be helping," Carl mumbled, a bitter look on his face, "not sitting in bed doing nothing."

Teddy made a face. Oh, he knew all too well how that must feel. "Trust me, I know how you feel. But I don't think you'll be very much help out there." Then, his eyes moved to Carl's bandaged stomach, and he winced. "How is your side, anyway? Nobody would tell me anything when I asked. I mean, I know what happened but like… nobody would say anything else. Hershel though you would die, y'know."

"It's fine, just hurts a little," Carl told him, glancing down at his stomach. He then pulled the blanket up, so it was covering the bandage.

"It's kind of cool, do you think it'll scar?" Teddy couldn't help but ask. "It would be a pretty cool scar, don't you think?" 

Carl frowned, his brows furrowing. "I guess."

Teddy had to hold back a wince, maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Harry had often told him he had little to no filter when it came to what came out of his mouth, though Teddy hadn’t really understood what his godfather had meant until now.

"If it makes you feel any better, I lost my leg." Teddy offered, gesturing toward his right leg. Carl's eyes move to his bandaged stump, and his eyes widen. “And that is definitely going to leave a scar, cause I’m pretty sure legs don’t grow back.” At least, muggle ones don’t. He was pretty sure there was magic that could heal lost limbs easy enough, as long as they weren’t caused by dark magic, that is.

"How did _that_ happen?!" Carl asked, looking a little green. Teddy couldn't blame him, he still felt a little sick when he looked at his leg as well. 

"I was bitten." Teddy said, his arms moving to hug his chest. "They had to cut my leg off to save me. I don't really remember a lot of it. I mean, I sorta remember them cutting it off, but I was kind of out of it at the time, so..." he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders.

Carl frowned again, but then he gave Teddy a small smile. "That's actually kind of cool. Not being bitten, of course, that sucks. But you look like a pirate!"

Teddy grinned. "Yeah, I guess. I never really thought about it that way before." He looked down at his leg, a frown pulling at his lips. "Still, it sucks when trying to move around. I have to use crutches, and it's so slow! And do not get me started on going up and down stairs, it's actual torture!"

Carl snickered, and Teddy scowled. "It's not funny!"

His expression changed to a guilty one. "Sorry."

"It's okay, I guess I kind of set myself up for that."

"You totally did," Carl said, a grin on his face. He opened his mouth, probably to say something else, but a loud rumble from his stomach interrupted him. 

An embarrassed look crossed his face, and Teddy couldn't help but smile a little. "Do you want me to go find Hershel? He could probably get you something to eat. I'd do it myself but, well..." he motioned to his leg.

Carl opened his mouth to speak, but mere seconds after the words left Teddy's mouth, Mrs. Grimes walked into the room. Her gaze fell on the two boys on the bed, and she raised her eyebrows. "And what's going on in here?"

She's carrying a tray with all sorts of food on it - eggs and sausage, two rolls of bread slathered with butter, an assortment of fruits. The sight of it made Teddy realize how hungry he was too, and his stomach gave a low growl. Thankfully, nobody but him seemed to notice.

"Mom!" Carl cried out, straightening up, his blue eyes wide. "Me and Teddy were just talking!"

Her eyes landed on Teddy - on his small frame, messy hair, and missing leg - and looked taken aback. "I didn't realize Hershel had a son."

"Oh, um, I'm not his son." Teddy corrected her. "I'm just staying here, I'm kind of in the same situation as Carl." _Except he has his family here with him, while mine is all the way back in England._

"Oh," she took a few steps forward, sliding the tray onto the nightstand next to Carl, who instantly started stuffing his face, much to Teddy's amusement, "where are your parents then, sweetheart?"

Teddy immediately lowered his eyes, hunching his shoulders. He had been expecting this. "They died when I was a baby. My godfather and grandmother have been taking care of me since, but he lives back in England. And I don't know where my gran is, so I’m alone."

The room fell silent, a tense awkwardness filling the air. Teddy was used to this kind of thing. After ten years of people acting this way around him when they first learn about him being an orphan, it hardly bothered him anymore.

Still, it didn't mean he had to like it.

Sighing, he said. "It's alright, though, I don't really remember them anyway."

He had a feeling that he only made it worse, but his words seem to do the trick in breaking the silence, and Mrs. Grimes seemed to take the hint, quickly turning her attention back to Carl.

"How are you feeling, baby?" Mrs. Grimes asked, reaching out a hand to brush over Carl's forehead. "You feel a little warm." Carl jerked his head back, and he made a face, obviously annoyed by his mother's worry. Teddy doesn't really understand kids who complain about their parents showing too much affection, he'd give anything to have his own parents be able to do the same. 

"Mo-om!" Carl whined, swatting at her hands. "I'm fine, you can stop worrying!"

She pursed her lips, but Teddy could see a flash of relief flicker in her eyes. "I'm your mother, Carl, worrying about you is my job."

“But still! It’s so annoying!”

“You nearly died yesterday, I think that gives me plenty of reason to worry!”

Teddy watched in bewilderment as the two argued back and forth. A part of him wondered that, if his parents had lived through the Battle of Hogwarts, he would've done the same thing. Then he began to wonder if he would have even been in this situation in the first place if his parents had lived.

He'd like to think that no, he wouldn't have, but who knows. Certainly not him.

Teddy was beginning to wonder if he should leave when he heard it, the steady thump-thump of an extra heartbeat. He glanced around the room, his brow furrowing in confusion, trying to find the source. He had always had better hearing than usual, thanks to his Dad, hence hearing people's heartbeats, but this was a little odd, even for him. Teddy looked back at Carl and Mrs. Grimes, who were the only other people in the room, but Teddy could hear four heartbeats, not three, and there were only three people in the room. His eyes moved to the doorway, wondering if he was just hearing things. 

Unless...

His eyes then narrowed as they moved back across the room to where Mrs. Grimes was, too busy arguing with Carl to notice his plight, the realization slowly dawning on him. The only other time this had happened was when each of his aunts had been pregnant.

_Nope, I am not dealing with this shit. Not today!_

Teddy began to move back, and upon reaching the end of the bed, leaned down to grab his crutches. 

"Teddy? Where are you going?"

_Nevermind, then._

Teddy looked up to see Carl staring at him with curious eyes. Mrs. Grimes was looking his way as well, and Teddy shrugged.

"Gonna go see if Maggie's back yet, need to ask her something," Teddy responded, and it wasn't entirely a lie.

Without waiting for a response, Teddy placed the bottom of his crutches to the ground and pushed himself up. Carl darted forward, ignoring his mother's protests, and caught Teddy by his arm, nearly sending him toppling over. 

"You'll come back, won't you?" Carl asked, his voice pleading.

Teddy blinked, slightly taken aback, but nodded. "Yeah, of course." He shot him a grin. "I can bring you some books too. If you'd like." 

Carl looked relieved. "Do you have any comic books here? I love those!"

Teddy paused, shrugging his shoulders. "Dunno, I could ask Hershel if you want." 

"Could you?" Mrs. Grimes asked. "Carl can get a bit restless at times, so some books would be great."

Teddy nodded, knowing all to well how that could feel. "I'll try."


	9. Breakfast, Dinner, and Comic Books

Teddy woke early the next morning, in the bedroom that Hershel had - somewhat reluctantly - given to him after the other group had arrived. A part of Teddy was thinking that this was probably his stepson's room, who he had only heard about briefly from Maggie and Otis, or Beth occasionally, and that was why Hershel was so reluctant to let him sleep in it. Shawn, Teddy thought his name was, who had died a few days after Maggie and Otis had found Teddy, and while he didn't know what exactly had happened to the man that caused his demise, he knew it couldn't have been anything good. 

Actually, now that he thought about it, he had a pretty good idea of what happened. 

And he really couldn't blame Hershel for not wanting to give this room to him either, Teddy felt pretty guilty about sleeping in it, and he hadn't even known Shawn. There was just something about sleeping in a dead person's room that just didn't sit well with him.

Teddy stretched his arms out before reaching a hand to rub the sleep from his eyes. He glanced around the room, a quick flash of disappointment running through him as he once more took in his surroundings. 

Awakening from sleep was an odd experience for Teddy nowadays. Even after having two months to get used to it, a part of him still expected to wake up in his room at Potter Manor, half-buried under multiple warm and fluffy blankets with the sunlight streaming through the windows and James curled up fast asleep beside him after sneaking into his room the night before as he often did. And then there was another part of him that expected to wake up in the hotel room his gran had checked them into when they got to Georgia. He imagined he would get up, eat breakfast, chat with Harry and Ginny using the two-way magic mirror he had given him (which had been left back in the hotel the day everything went to hell,) and go about with his day like usual until it was time to go home.

But instead, he woke up here, in an unfamiliar room in a house filled with people he only met a month or so ago. And while it was preferable to being dead in a ditch somewhere, it never stopped Teddy from feeling the slightest bit disappointed every time he woke.

Teddy sighed and swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching down to grab his crutches from where they lay on the bedroom floor. Hershel had made many attempts to stop Teddy from putting them there, but Teddy wasn't really the best at remembering things, so he'd often forget and continue putting them on the floor. Oh sue him, he had a lot going on at the moment, he was allowed to be forgetful.

He rested the crutches on the bed, reached out to flick on the lights, allowing himself to get changed into clean clothes - which the Greene's had lent him seeing as his own were mostly destroyed. They were a bit big on him, but they were better than nothing. 

After a few minutes of struggling, he reached back for his crutches. Once he managed to wedge the crutches back under his arms, he made his way out into the hall and descended the stairs as carefully as he could. Climbing downstairs with only one leg was a complete pain sometimes, and don't get him started on going  _ up _ them. The moment his foot touched the wooden floor, he turned and immediately started making his way to the dining room for breakfast.

Arriving in the dining room, he was quick to notice that - with the exception of Beth, who was probably still up in her room - he was the last one to enter. Hershel sat at the end of the table, talking in a low voice to Patricia, who was seated on the left of him, her eyes red and puffy from crying. On his other side was Maggie, who was nibbling on her toast with a pensive expression as she looked over what appeared to be a map, a pencil in her other hand as she occasionally marked something down. Jimmy, across from Maggie, was practically inhaling his plate of eggs and sausage. It was kind of like how Uncle Ron ate, just way messier if it were possible.

"Good morning," Teddy mumbled sleepily, seating himself in the open chair beside Maggie. He set his crutches on the floor, once more ignoring Hershel's huff of annoyance, and ran a hand through his hair, which only seemed to be getting even messier as time went on. Longer too, it went just below his shoulders now. 

Now that he thought about it, he should probably cut it. Not that he knew how to, he usually just morphed his hair into an appropriate length, only letting Harry cut it every few months. But seeing as he wasn't able to morph, cutting it was probably the way to go. Maybe he could ask Patricia.

"Morning," came Maggie's absent-minded reply. Her mind was clearly on other things at the moment.

Everyone else murmured their own hellos, and breakfast was a somewhat quiet affair after that, all of them eating mostly in silence with the exception of the occasional murmur. It wasn't usually like this, but after what happened with Otis, nobody here could really find much to say.

Beth stumbled in a few minutes later, rubbing her eyes with her hair still messy from sleep. She chose a seat by Jimmy, nibbling on a piece of toast, her eyes not straying from her food. Her eyes were red and puffy, and Teddy had little doubt she had done her fair share of crying the night before. Beth had been pretty close with Otis now that he thought about it. Patricia had looked the same way when he came in, her hair was just less messy than Beth's.

There were another few seconds of silence before Hershel cleared his throat.

"So, how did everyone sleep?"

"Mmm, juf fine," Jimmy mumbled, his mouth still stuffed with food. He let out a yelp a few seconds later, turning to Beth with a startled expression. Teddy could only assume she kicked him in the shin or something. He'd seen Aunt Hermione (and occasionally Ginny) do that plenty of times to Uncle Ron whenever he talked with his mouth full. "What was that for!?"

Beth simply made a humming noise, before returning to stabbing at her food with a fork. 

"Meh," Teddy said, breaking the silence one more and nibbling on a piece of bacon, "could've been better."

Hershel turned his attention to his two daughters. "Beth? Maggie?" 

"Same as Teddy," was Maggie's response. Beth just nodded, still looking half asleep. Teddy couldn't blame her. He wasn't much of a morning person either. 

"That's good," Hershel said after a moment's pause. "Now, I'd hate to bother you all after you've just woken up, but I need to ask you all something."

That quickly caught everyone's attention. Teddy and Maggie exchanged glances, equally as confused.

"Is there something wrong, Daddy?" Beth murmured, her voice tinged with worry, speaking for the first time that day. 

"No, no, there's nothing wrong, Junebug," Hershel assured her, "I just need everyone's opinion on something." 

"It's about Rick's group and the missing girl," Maggie interjected, turning everyone's attention to her, "isn't it?"

Hershel hesitated, taking a long sip of his coffee. After a few seconds, he placed the mug down, letting out a long sigh, "it is."

"What about them?" Teddy asked, his brows furrowing. "Did they do something?"

"No," Hershel replied instantly, "I just want to know how everybody feels about them."

Jimmy shrugged before shoveling another piece of bacon into his mouth, "they seem alright."

"I haven't really gotten the chance to talk to any of them," Beth said in a soft voice, "but I agree with Jimmy, they seem like good people."

A small frown formed on Hershel's face, and he nodded before turning to Maggie and Teddy. "What about you two, what do you think of them?"

"They seem okay," Maggie said, looking up from the map she was holding, "I went to town with Glenn the other day, he's a bit awkward at times, but all in all seemed like a good person."

Teddy shrugged, taking a bite of his toast. "I only met Carl and Mrs. Grimes, but I honestly don't know what to think of the rest of them." He paused mid-chew. "Speaking of which, Carl was wondering if you had any comic books."

"There should be some in the closet," Patricia told him. 

"Oh, okay, thanks." 

"Is there any reason you needed our opinion about them, Daddy?" Maggie asked.

"Can't a man be curious?" Hershel said with a huff.

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "I just find it a little hard to believe that you're  _ just curious." _

Teddy was wondering a little bit about that too, but hadn't planned on saying anything. Oh well, it's a bit of a win-win situation, really. 

"Fine, ya got me there." Hershel put down his fork, reaching a hand to rub at his forehead. "I'm a little wary of them, it's been months since we've last talked to people outside this farm, and things have changed, people can do whatever they want now without punishment, and we don't know if these people are trustworthy or not."

Hm, that did make a lot of sense. But Teddy was pretty sure that a group with a child (two actually, but one was lost) and a pregnant woman in it weren't bad people. But who knows anymore. Before this, he thought that policemen were good people, but two months ago, he'd witnessed them executing a whole town. But not everyone was like that.

It seemed the others were thinking the same thing.

"You think that these people will try and hurt us after we saved one of their kids?" Maggie asked, her voice tinged with disbelief. "I'm not sure about you, Daddy, but the only one I would watch out for is Shane. Wasn't he the one who gave you a whole lot of trouble about the guns the other day?"

Wasn't Shane the one who went with Otis to the school? Teddy hadn't really seen much of him since he came back with the medical supplies, so he really had no idea what to think about him. He was honestly kind of scary, he didn't seem very friendly either, he kept glaring at everyone.

"I suppose," Hershel still held a doubtful look on his face. He clearly didn't want the other group to be at the farm, but Teddy knew he wasn't about to just kick them out, not after he'd given them his word. 

That actually made Teddy start to wonder, had the Greene's been like this when Teddy first got here? Doubtful and unsure whether he should stay? Did they have this same conversation, just about him instead? He really hoped they didn't, but he had no clue at this rate.

A horrible thought suddenly came to mind.

What if when this group finally left, Hershel made Teddy go with them? The idea was a little farfetched, but Teddy didn't know these people all that well, who knows what they might do. Teddy would like to think that they wouldn't, but he  _ didn't know. _

Suddenly without an appetite, Teddy pushed back his plate, trying his best to swallow down the lump in his throat. 

"I think I'm gonna go get those comic books," Teddy told them, reaching down to grab his crutches, "are they on the upstairs or downstairs closet?" He directed the last bit toward Patricia, who looked a little surprised at being addressed but answered nonetheless.

"There should be a few in both," she replied.

Okay, good, that made things a little easier for him. Teddy really wasn't in the mood to climb up those stairs again.

* * *

Carl looked just about ready to nod off when Teddy entered the room again with a box of comic books at his feet.

Teddy had a fair bit of trouble getting the comics out of the closet, seeing as someone decided to put them on the top shelf, but when he finally did, he then had to figure out how to move them, because he sure as hell wasn't carrying them anywhere. He ended up trying to bring a few under his arms, but they just kept falling, so in the end, he had just gathered every single one he could reach, put them all into a cardboard box that was also in the closet, and used one of his crutches to push them along. It had taken a little while, but he managed just fine.

"Teddy!" Carl cried out upon spotting him, immediately sitting up. "What are you-" his eyes landed on the box, his eyes widening when he caught sight of the contents, which were perfectly visible, seeing as Teddy didn't close the box. "Wait! Are those comic books?" 

"Yeah, you asked me to find you some, remember?" Teddy said, collapsing onto the armchair beside Carl's bed. "And you would  _ not _ believe how much trouble I had getting these things out."

Carl leaned over, tugging the box a little nearer, and took out one of the comics, flipping through it for a few seconds before looking back up. He sent Teddy a wide grin, "thanks for finding these, I was starting to go a little insane in here." There was a pause, and an anxious look passed over his face. "It wasn't too much trouble, though, was it?"

"Well, I ended up knocking a lot of things over, and it's going to be a total pain for whoever has to clean it up later. But hey, it wasn't that bad," Teddy assured him. 

Carl laughed, "that's good."

Teddy watched as Carl began browsing through the box, "I'm guessing you're a big fan of comics then?"

"Yup! I love them, Mom says I'm obsessed, though. Pretty much refused to buy me any before, mostly got them from Dad and occasionally Shane." Upon seeing Teddy's confused look added. "Shane's my godfather."

"That's nice," Teddy says, swinging his leg back and forth from his place on the chair. He couldn't imagine having someone as scary as Shane as a godfather, it made him really glad he had Harry as his own godfather. Though then again, Harry could be pretty terrifying when he wanted to be. "Do you have any favorites?"

"Pretty much any superhero ones," Carl replied, smiling, "what about you? Do you got any favorites?"

"Oh, I don't really read comics," Teddy answered, an embarrassed blush covering his cheeks, "now that I think about it, I don't think I've actually ever read any."

"What?!"

Teddy couldn't help but grin at the blatant horror and disbelief on Carl's face. The other boy looked shocked, almost as if the idea of someone never reading comics had never occurred to him. Which honestly might be the case if the look on his face said anything about it. 

"Well, it means that I haven't read comic books before." Teddy retorted, fighting back the urge to laugh.

The shocked look on his face didn't change. "But  _ how?" _

"One of my aunts hates them," Teddy supplied, shrugging, "don't know why, but she flips out every single time they're mentioned. Say that they're 'not real books,' whatever that's supposed to mean." 

It was the truth too. Aunt Hermione hated comic books. Well, maybe hate was too strong of a word for it, but she really, really,  _ really  _ didn't like them whatsoever. Teddy couldn't really understand why: if it has words in it, has a cover, and has a title, then it's a book, it's that simple. Or at least, to Teddy, it is. Still, he never really bothered arguing with Aunt Hermione about it, it wasn't worth the effort in his opinion.

"Your aunt and my mom would get along well," Carl mumbled under his breath. He took out a stack of comics from the box, looking through them for a few seconds. Then, he shoved one of the comic books into Teddy's arms. "Here, read this. It's one of my favorites, I think you'd like it."

Teddy reached out to take it. He stared at it for a moment before flipping the comic book open, peering inside at the images. Teddy then glanced up at Carl before looking back down and flipping back to the first page to begin reading. As Carl predicted, Teddy quickly became invested in the comic: asking questions, rolling his eyes when the characters did something stupid, and laughing at the funny parts, and when he finished, Carl simply handed him another.

The next few hours passed by with only the occasional ("How are you liking it?") and ("I finished this one, can you pass me another.) Every question Teddy had about the characters or the comics themselves, Carl would answer without any hesitation or even the slightest hint of frustration. ("That one's Captain America, he's one of my favorites.") or ("No, that one with the bow is Clint, he's pretty cool!) Carl was obviously happy to talk about them, and Teddy was perfectly fine with that. It took his mind off of the worse things happening right now. 

It felt quite nice to have a friend his age, especially spending so long in a house filled with people older than him. Beth was cool and all, but she was sixteen and had vastly different interests than he did. And while Maggie was always happy to spend time with him, she was usually too busy to do anything with him, either making supply runs into town or taking care of the animals on the farm. And Jimmy was just really,  _ really _ awkward when it came to Teddy, almost like he wasn't sure how to interact with him, which might actually be the case with him. He also kept drooling over Beth, and that became really annoying whenever Teddy tried talking to him.

So yeah, Carl was a great reprieve from the lack of interaction with anyone his age. He was very open and talkative when it came to comics and his other interests, and all in all, seemed like a great friend. It also helped that the two of them seemed to have quite a bit in common. That was always a perk.

Teddy flipped to the next page of the comic he was reading. Reading the dialogue and studying the illustrations with keen interest. This was his fourth comic so far, and he was pretty sure that Carl had already gone through at least half of them at this point, but Teddy honestly wasn't sure. 

"Wait, so the Black Widow is an assassin?" Teddy asked a few seconds later, glancing up at Carl. The other boy nodded, looking up at him.

"Yeah, she is, and she's super badass too!" Terror fell over his face as soon as he said this. "Shoot, don't tell Mom I swore, she'll kill me!"

Teddy shot him a grin, "don't worry, I won't tell." He knew all too well how Carl felt, having experienced it plenty of times himself. Nana Molly, Aunt Hermione, and Aunt Fleur always freaked out when he or one of his cousins cursed, fortunately for him, he never really got punished for doing it. Ginny always just laughed whenever he swore, while Harry usually just rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath but would be smiling fondly. The same could not be said for the rest of his cousins, however. Victoire once got grounded for a full month for saying 'shit' after hearing Uncle George say it.

A few more minutes passed by quite peacefully for the two of them up until the sound of shouting began from outside. Carl and Teddy exchanged confused glances before looking toward the door. 

"Erm, should we go check that out..?" Teddy asked after a few moments of staring at the door.

"I dunno, maybe," Carl mumbled, shifting slightly in his spot, his eyes not leaving the door.

They sit there for a few more seconds, unsure of what to do. There was a tenseness in Carl's body as the shouting grew nearer, and Teddy had a feeling that the other boy was about to bolt out the door, gunshot wound be damned. Not that Teddy blamed him. If it weren't for his leg, he probably would have done that already.

That was when a gunshot rang out, scaring the ever-loving shit out of Teddy and causing Carl to bolt out the door. 

* * *

Well, that certainly didn't go how he thought it would go.

Teddy nibbled on a piece of chicken, his eyes scanning the dining room that was packed to the brim with people. 

As it turned out, nobody had been attacked or murdered in any way, shape, or form; it had just been a huge misunderstanding that nearly killed a guy. What Teddy managed to gather from the adults was not a lot, but he managed to get the gist of it. What happened was that while searching for Sophia, one of the men from the other group had gotten injured after he accidentally impaled himself on his own bolt. After that, he had killed two walkers with said bolt after ripping it out of his body, and upon coming back to the farm, ended up being shot by one of the women in his group after she and everyone else outside had mistaken him for a monster. Or a walker as Mr. Grimes's group called them. Teddy couldn't imagine how bad the guy must've looked for someone to try and shoot him, talk about bad luck.

He shot a glance at Carl, who was sitting beside him, talking animatedly to Beth about something that Teddy forgot about within the first few minutes of him speaking. As it turned out, Jimmy wasn't the only one who had a crush on Beth. Personally, Teddy thought that Carl was much less subtle about it, though. His eyes then moved to the direction of the guest bedroom, which was now being occupied by a very grumpy and injured archer, who did not seem at all pleased by his current situation if the loud swearing was anything to go by.

Luckily, the woman's bullet only grazed his head, and so he hadn't died. But Hershel was certainly very annoyed by it all. Relieved that nobody had died, of course, but very annoyed all the same. He'd complained to Patricia after he patched the man up that 'these people were going through medicine like it were candy,' and that, 'the fact that they lasted this long is a miracle itself,' which Teddy honestly found kind of amusing. And when he told Carl what Hershel had said about his group, the other boy just burst into laughter, with Teddy joining him a few seconds later.

Mrs. Grimes and Carol had continued making dinner - which they had begun a few minutes before people mistook the archer for a walker - for everyone as soon as things started to clear up a bit. Glenn, Mr. Grimes, Shane, the archer, and Maggie began going over the map again, marking down the area around where Daryl found Sophia's doll trying to figure out where she might've headed. Beth and Patricia eventually joined Mrs. Grimes and Carol. While Jimmy spent most of his time sulking in the corner for whatever reason.

Dinner was a happy affair, with the two groups sitting together in the Greene's house, laughing and chatting with one another. It seemed that a huge weight had just been lifted off their shoulders, though Teddy hadn't realized why until Carl informed him that Daryl ("The one who Andrea accidentally shot,") had found Sophia's doll washed up in a creekbed. Teddy supposed he understood. Finding that doll was a good sign, it showed that she had been there, which meant that she was alive, or had been a few hours ago. Teddy didn't dare voice that last thought aloud, though. 

Everyone seemed pretty relaxed, besides Hershel, who looked very sullen for some reason. Teddy spent a lot more time talking instead of eating. It was more socialization than he had had in weeks, and he would be damned if he was going to waste the chance to talk to everyone. Carl, for some reason, looked very amused by this but was happy to include him in conversations. 

Speaking of conversations, these people had a lot of questions they kept asking, like what Beth had been planning to do once she graduated, or what Maggie had been doing, or Jimmy. He figured this was their way of distracting themselves from what was happening around them, and what the world was now, but Teddy still didn't understand half of what they asked. Seriously, what the hell was the deal with people asking questions about top or bottom to Jimmy and Beth, none of the Greene's had a bunk bed as far as he knew, so why were they asking?

Upon voicing that thought, T-Dog, the one who had first started talking about it, had started choking on his sandwich. Carl had been as equally as confused as Teddy was when Glenn, Mr. Grimes, and Shane had burst into laughter a few seconds later. While Mrs. Grimes and Andrea looked like they had just swallowed a lemon. Nobody answered his question, though.

Yeah, adults were weird. 

Of course, questions had eventually been directed in his direction. The first one asked had been his age, and then about his accent, whether or not he was from Britain, (Carl had spent five minutes after that bombarding Teddy with questions about Britain before Mr. Grimes managed to stop him.) And eventually, Andrea had asked the dreaded question of: "what happened to your leg?"

Teddy immediately sighed, lowering his eyes and bowing his head, trying his best to avoid eye contact with anyone at the table. "I got bit, they had to cut my leg off to keep me alive." 

Things instantly became silent at the dinner table. Maggie had a very pissed off look in her eye and was now glaring at the blonde with every ounce of anger she had, Beth honestly looked super uncomfortable as if she’d rather be anywhere else but here, Jimmy continued eating - oblivious to the tension around the room, and Carl from under the table grabbed his hand, giving it a small squeeze. 

Glenn was the first one to speak. "Does that really work?"

Teddy shrugged, "it did for me, so yeah."

Mr. Grimes had a thoughtful look in his eye, "do you think it would work for anyone else?"

Once again, Teddy shrugged. "As long as it's not on their stomach or neck or something because I'm pretty sure amputating a waist and neck is impossible."

That gifted him a few chuckles from around the table, and Teddy let out a sigh of relief as tensions started to cease and things began to turn back to other subjects. Carl snuck him a smile before quickly drawing him into a conversation about the comic books they read earlier that day, efficiently distracting Teddy from the anxiousness the question had brought to him. 

And for a while, everything was normal. 

_ He should’ve known things wouldn’t stay that way. _


	10. Shooting Lessons

"Quit starin' at me like that," the archer snapped, but Teddy doesn't even flinch. Instead, he looked up with a surprised and confused look in his eyes, his brows furrowing when he caught sight of the man glaring at him through narrowed eyes.

He was sitting in the armchair next to the archer -- no, Daryl's -- bed, a comic book in his hands and occasionally glancing up at the resting man as he read. Daryl had appeared to be asleep, rolled up onto his uninjured side with the blanket pulled up over his waist when Teddy had first entered the room, but Teddy had immediately known he wasn't. Still, he had come in here to read his book in peace, seeing everywhere else in the house was too chaotic for that, but it seemed he would be able to do that either.

"I'm not staring," Teddy responded after a few moments, flipping to the next page in his book, "I'm reading."

"Well, stop it," Daryl snapped, lifting his head off the pillow to glare at him. "What'r you even doin' here, go bug someone else an' leave me alone."

"How am I buggin' you? I'm not even talking?" Teddy questioned, brows furrowing in confusion.

"You're talkin' now," Daryl snapped, which only served to confuse Teddy even more, "-and you just bein' here is annoying as fuck. M' tryin' to sleep, and all I hear is you flipping the pages in your stupid book and you sighing and shit."

Teddy scowled at this. This whole conversation was just proving how weird adults could be. "Language! I'm a kid, asshole." 

Okay, in his defense, he was a kid, so he was allowed to be a little bit of a hypocrite at times. Just as long as he wasn't a dick about it.

The man snorted and opened his mouth, probably to snap at him or something like that, but closed it after a few moments when no words came out. He shook his head, mumbled something under his breath before letting his head flop back down onto the pillow and turning away from Teddy once more, grumbling lowly as he did so. A part of Teddy wondered if the man was always this grumpy, or maybe he was just upset he was on bedrest too. If so, Teddy couldn't really blame him 'cause bedrest sucked -- a lot. But then again, he'd also seen the man stalking around scowling at people a lot during the best few days with the exception of Carol, so him being grumpy might just be his thing. Kind of like how it was for Draco.

Meh, he'll ask Carl later. Maybe he'll know.

A few seconds of silence passed.

"Are you always this grumpy?" Teddy asked, now unable to focus on his book.

Or not. 

Gran always did say that he'd never been all that logical. Then again, since when were witches and wizards logical? Especially him: son of a werewolf, metamorphmagus, descendent of the Black family, Harry Potter's godson, frequent visitor at the Burrow... hell, he was bound to be a little insane or unpredictable sometimes.

Daryl lifted his head to shoot him a glare, "are you always this annoying?" 

"I dunno, maybe," was Teddy's response.

"Why the fuck are ya even in here?" Daryl grumbled. "Go read in the livin' room and leave me alone." 

"Maggie and Glenn are doing something weird in the living room," Teddy responded, nose wrinkling at the memory of it, "and Mrs. Grimes is in the kitchen with Ms. Carol cookin' or something. Beth's upstairs, and I don't wanna climb the stairs, but I also want to read my book in peace." He then shrugged, letting some of his hair fall in front of his eyes. He reached a hand back, tucking it behind his ear. "So yeah, this is the only place I can really go."

If possible, Daryl's eyes narrowed even more. He kind of reminded Teddy of his gran's old cat, or just cats in general. Really, really grumpy for no particular reason. "What about the Grimes kid, can't you go talk to him or one of your sisters or whatever."

"First of all, Beth and Maggie aren't my sisters," Teddy explained for what felt like the fiftieth time in the past few days, "and as for Carl, he's with his dad, and I can't exactly just walk over there to go see what he's doing now can I," Teddy said, motioning toward his leg and raising a brow. "Kinda sucks, though, my leg, I mean. Cause earlier, Carl said that Mr. Grimes was planning on doing gun training later today, but I can't go because of my leg. And gun training sounds really cool too!"

"Guns ain't toys," Daryl said, an odd emotion in his voice, "an' what the hells stoppin' you from goin'? None of them are your parents or family or anything like that, can't tell you to do shit."

Huh, that was actually a really, really good point. Still, there were a lot of problems with that point.

"Well, yeah, I know they're not toys, m'not stupid you know-" Daryl scoffed a little at this, and Teddy scowled but continued on, "-and, no offense, of course, but adults are super duper weird," a snort came from Daryl's direction, "-they're not gonna let me go even if none of them are family. I just-" Teddy sighed, shaking his head, "-it's stupid, I wanna learn how to defend myself. Last time I encountered a monster, I wasn't able to do that, and..." he looked to his leg, his face darkening, "that happened." 

Why was he even telling him this? Daryl said so himself; he just wanted to go to sleep, so what Teddy should be doing was getting his crutches and going to the porch to read and let the injured man rest before Hershel came over and dragged him out himself. Or he could check the living room and pray that Glenn and Maggie still weren't in there. He was already scarred for life as it was, so he didn't need to see them sticking their tongues down each other's throats any more than he had too. Teddy already seen enough of that with Ginny and Harry, thank you very much. 

But instead of snapping at him again or something like that, something on Daryl's face shifted, and various emotions flashed across it: annoyance, anger, curiosity, as well as a few other ones that Teddy wasn't able to name. Teddy could've sworn that the man looked a little worried, but it was gone in less than a second, so he didn't know for sure. 

"That's bullshit," the archer grumbled, sitting up a little and wincing slightly, "them not wanting you to come, just go to the fuckin' gun training. Guilt them into letting you go or some shit," he shrugged, averting his eyes, "-ya seem pretty good at that after all."

Did he? He hadn't known that, at least, not before now. Teddy frowned, looking down at his lap. There was a loose string in the jeans he was wearing, and he absentmindedly began to pick at it, his mind wandering.

"You really think they'll let me go?" Teddy asked after a few seconds, and he doesn't bother in keeping the hopeful tone out of his voice.

"Go where?" Somebody asked from the doorway, and Teddy nearly jumped right out of his skin in fright as Beth walked into the room. He then held back a sigh, forcing himself to relax upon spotting his friend.

She was carrying a bag of what Teddy could only guess was medicine in her hands, a vaguely nervous expression crossing her face as she stepped into the room. Daryl scowl deepened at the sight of her, and she flinched a little, obviously intimidated by the man. 

"Nothin' Beth," Teddy replied almost instantly, sparing a quick glance toward Daryl. The last thing he needed as of now was for Beth to catch wind of their conversation and end up reporting it to her dad. Beth was a good friend, but she was also a huge stickler for rules, something that Teddy sure as hell wasn't. He hadn't just inherited his parent's looks after all. 

Beth raised a brow, a doubtful expression on her face. "Uh-huh, really." She didn't look too convinced by his words but thankfully didn't say anything else about it. 

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Teddy asked, tilting his head. He heard Daryl scoff again from the bed but paid it no mind. 

"Daddy wanted me to give Mr. Dixon some of these." Beth dug her hand into the bag, taking out two pill bottles. "Says you should only take two or three every few hours." She's directing the last bit toward Daryl, who didn't look pleased with this whatsoever. Teddy couldn't blame him; he hated taking pills too. He preferred potions by a long shot, despite how awful some of them may taste.

"Feel fine," Daryl said to her, his scowl deepening, "don't need any. An' don't call me Mr. Dixon."

"Fine, I won't call you that. And you only feel fine because you took some last night," Beth responded in a matter of fact tone, opening the bottle and tapping a few small pills into her open palm, "but that doesn't mean your on the clear, that infection in your side is no joke, y'know. You could die." 

He sent her a fierce glare, but to her credit, Beth doesn't cower. "It's already goin' down, I'll be back on my feet by tomorrow morning." 

"I'm not leavin' until you take them," Beth insisted, placing a hand on her hip and raising a brow. 

They engaged in a brief staring contest, one that ended a few seconds later with Daryl reluctantly holding out a hand to take the pills, his scowl deepening. Beth moved to stand by his bed, depositing them into the man's open palm. Teddy eyed the small things curiously, recognizing the painkillers fairly quickly but none of the others. There was a pause before Daryl dropped them into his mouth, sending Beth another glare. "Happy now, Blondie?" He asked. 

"Very," she told him, eyes narrowing into tiny slits, "and my name is Beth, not blondie."

"Yeah? Well, I didn't ask," he retorted, sitting up from the bed. He made a move like he was about to try and get out of it, but Beth automatically grabbed him by the shoulders, pushing him back into the pillows without a second thought. The man scowled and shoved her hands away a few seconds later, flinching away from her touch and looking as if he'd just been burned.

"Get your hands off me," he snapped.

"Then stop trying to get up from the bed, you're gonna end up ripping your stitches," Beth shot back. Teddy looked in between them, not at all understanding the weird tension in the room. What did Ginny call it again?

He couldn't remember. He was pretty sure it started with an 'S,' though.

Teddy cleared his throat, flipping his book back open. "Please don't tell me that you're about to pull a Glenn and Maggie because if you do, I will throw up, and I don't know about you, but I think that I've done enough of that recently."

Both of their heads swiveled around to stare at him, one looking shocked while the other just looked confused and a little disgusted.

Teddy just grinned, hiding his face behind the book.

"Er, what?" Beth asked after a few moments, a confused expression crossing her face, and Teddy rolled his eyes, eyeing the two of them from over the book.

"I said, please don't tell me that you're about to pull a Glenn and Maggie because I might throw up if you do." He repeated slowly, as if talking to a child. Which was funny because wasn't he supposed to be the child in this situation?

"What the fuck is that supposed'ta mean?" Daryl snapped, but there was a look on his face that told that he had quite a good idea of just what Teddy was talking about.

Teddy raised a brow at this. "Go into the living room, and you'll see what I mean."

He saw the realization dawn on them almost instantly.

And it was glorious.

Beth immediately began to splutter, face turning bright red as she practically leaped away from the man's bedside. Daryl scowled at him, looking as if he wanted to jump across the room to strangle him, but Teddy could easily spy the man's face start to turn red as well. He held back a grin. It was way too easy to mess with these people. 

"Teddy Lupin!" Beth hissed after regaining her composure. Teddy gulped but plastered a sheepish smile onto his face: Beth looked pissed. Like really, really pissed, and from what he managed to gather from his two-month stay with the Greene's so far, she had a temper that was horribly similar to Ginny's when she got mad. And that was never a good thing.

"What?" Teddy asked, trying to put on the most innocent look he could muster.

Unfortunately, Beth wasn't fooled. Her eyes narrowed, and she placed both hands on her hips. Her face was still red, but there was a look on her face that made Teddy sink back against the couch, a sheepish grin crossing his face.

Oh shit, he was in trouble, wasn't he?

* * *

Despite looking utterly speechless, Beth proceeded to yell at him for the next fifteen minutes while Daryl watched with a bewildered, annoyed, and slightly amused expression on his face. And Teddy wasn't even able to escape, seeing as Beth had moved his crutches out of his reach right before she started yelling at him. The cheater.

Anyways, once Beth's lecture was finished, Teddy had been quick to grab his crutches and got out of there as fast as he could. He stumbled into Carl on his way onto the porch, and the other boy had practically dragged him down the steps, nearly sending Teddy toppling over multiple times. When Teddy had asked Carl what the hell had gotten into him, he soon found out that Rick, Shane, and his group were about to do the gun training, and in mere seconds Teddy shared the exact same enthusiasm as his friend and followed the brunet as quick as he could with his crutches. 

The two of them quickly found Mr. Grimes, Shane, Glenn, Jimmy, and a few others standing around an old rusted car. Teddy was a little surprised to see Glenn there, but he figured he and Maggie must've finished their snogging session sometime before Beth had stopped yelling at him. Teddy was also kind of taken aback to see both Jimmy and Patricia there. But then again, Jimmy had also shown quite a bit of interest in gun shooting too.

Carl didn't waste a second in tackling his father into a hug, which the man gladly returned. Teddy tried to stamp down the flare of jealousy he felt at the sight of Carl with his dad, but he couldn't help it. So he just averted his gaze from the sweet scene instead.

"Dad, Dad! Can Teddy join us for the shooting lesson?" Carl asked, jumping back with his blue eyes pleading.

Doubtful looks fell across the group's face almost immediately, and Teddy held back the urge to roll his eyes. Merlin's beard did these people really think he was that helpless. He was missing a leg for Merlin's sake, but that didn't mean he was a goner. 

Well, maybe it did, but Teddy sure as hell wasn't going to let himself die just because he didn't know how to defend himself.

"I don't really think that's a good idea, Carl." Rick glanced over to him before moving his gaze back to his son, and Carl immediately scowled, crossing his arms.

"Why not?" Carl asked. "I know that he doesn't have a leg, but I could help him, Dad, he could-"

"Shooting requires balance, Carl," Shane interjected, a frown marring his face, "Teddy doesn't have that." Carl opened his mouth, probably to argue or something like that, but Teddy beat him to it.

"Can I at least come? You don't have to let me shoot anything, but I just want to know how it works." Teddy pleaded, and immediately the whole group's gaze snapped onto him. He took a deep breath, Daryl's words coming back to him.  _ Make them feel guilty -- _ but how the hell was he supposed to do that? "I... I know you all think I'm useless, that I'm not gonna last a second out there if it ever comes to that-" various people flinched at that "-but I just want to know how to defend myself, j-just in case, y'know?" 

Mr. Grimes shifted uncertainly, a guilty expression crossing his face. "You know Hershel's rules," he stated after a few moments, "I can't have any of y'all shooting or going near guns without his permission."

"He's not my dad," Teddy reminded him quickly, "or my guardian, for that matter. And even if he was, he said it was okay for me to try, or at least watch. I mean, he doesn't want us carrying them around on our person, obviously, but he said it was okay for us to learn! Just in case, y'know?"

Jimmy and Patricia were both staring at him with the most disbelieving expressions on their faces. They both knew full well what a blatant lie he had just told. However, despite this, neither one said a word about it or even made a move to rat him out. Mr. Grimes, on the other hand, was looking him up and down, eyes narrowing as he took him in. After a few moments of this, the man sighed, running a hand through his hair before nodding slowly. 

"Alright, fine," Mr. Grimes said, "you can come,  _ but only to watch,  _ you're not shooting anything." Teddy nodded, a little put out, and Mr. Grimes continued. "We're still waiting for a few people, so it might be a bit." 

Teddy was on the verge of jumping for joy, and he might have done just that if he still had two legs, but alas, he didn't. So instead, he sent Mr. Grimes the widest grin he could muster. "Thank you, sir! I really appreciate it!" He had been expecting to be turned down and sent back to the house. So this was an unexpected yet entirely welcome turn of events. He still kind of wished he would be able to shoot, but it was better than sitting in the house bored out of his mind and doing nothing. 

The next twenty minutes was spent waiting by (or in) the cars for anyone else who wanted to join them for the lessons, which were quite a few. Teddy was a little surprised to see Beth approaching them from the house, and even more so when she asked to join them for shooting lessons, but he certainly wasn't complaining. Unlike Teddy, she hadn't looked the slightest bit surprised to see him sitting in one of the trucks with Carl at his side; she simply sighed, an exasperated smile on her face and shook her head, ducking into the car and sitting down next to Carl, whose face had turned bright red much to Teddy's amusement.

The only one who seemed the slightest bit miffed at seeing him here was Mrs. Grimes, but that, according to Carl, was because she didn't think that any of the children should be doing the shooting lessons, which he supposed he couldn't blame her for. He was pretty sure that his gran would've acted the same exact way if she were here. Teddy clenched his jaw and tried his best to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. How long has it last been since he's seen his gran? It felt so strange to no longer be around her anymore. He still expected her to pop out half the time to scold him for something he'd done: not eating enough, pushing himself too much, hell, she probably would've started scolding him for trying to do shooting lessons. 

"Hey, you okay?"

Teddy looked up at Carl, who was staring at him through worried blue eyes. Teddy shrugged, his fingers tightening around his crutches that were now resting across his lap as he struggled to find an answer for his friend's question.

"Just missin' someone back home," he said sadly, his fingers tapping against the wood, "that's all." 

A look of understanding flitted across his face, and Carl nodded. None of them said anything else for the next few minutes, totally content in their silence. And when the car finally started, growling loudly beneath them, Teddy leaned up, grabbing his seatbelt and fastening it with a click like Harry and Aunt Hermione always told him to do as everyone else in the car quickly did the same.

The car ride was short, the place they were going for the shooting lesson was only a little ways away from the farm, so they got there in a matter of minutes. Everyone got out, milling around and looking at the small field surrounded by forest and void of any monsters before lining up in front of Shane and Rick. Carl stuck by Teddy's side like glue, whispering excitedly as his father began to speak.

"Okay, now that we're here, let's get started, but first, we have to go over a few rules," Mr. Grimes began, clapping his hands together, "the first rule of shooting is to never point your gun at anything that you don't plan to shoot,  _ ever."  _ He looked around, looking pleased with himself when he saw the nods from the group. "Rule number two -- never have your finger on the trigger until you decide to shoot. Keep it straight until you know whether you want to shoot or not, and when you are, close your finger around the trigger. Rule number three-" he held up three fingers to emphasize, "-always treat a gun as if it were loaded, even if you know that it's unloaded. And lastly, you don't want to just know your target, you need to know what is behind your target too because whatever is behind your target is what you may hit."

Teddy tucked this information away into his mind as everyone else nodded. Shane stepped forward from where he'd been at Mr. Grimes' side and went around passing out the guns. Teddy took a few steps back with his crutches, giving everyone else some room as they spread out a little bit across the field. As soon as everyone else had their guns in their hands, Mr. Grimes started talking them through the more essential parts, like how to hold the gun and what stance you should take when shooting, which Teddy paid very close attention to. He might not be able to shoot -- but he'd be damned if he wasn't going to listen to this. Andrea seemed to get the hang of it almost immediately, as did Beth, which had definitely surprised a few of them. Shane and Mr. Grimes, in particular.

While this was happening, Jimmy was at her side, trying to show off to her, much to various people's amusement. He kept doing a bunch of weird stuff, like holding his gun to his side and other things that Teddy recognized from the few muggle action movies that he'd seen, which made the teenager look pretty stupid. Not that he was aware of it, seeing as he kept on doing it. 

Thankfully, T-Dog took mercy on the teen and told him off for trying to impersonate people from the movies before teaching Jimmy how to shoot the gun correctly. Carl, a few feet away from Jimmy, was doing much better than the other boy. Clearly, being the son of a cop and the godson of another had paid off in some way.

Teddy watched all of this enfold enviously from where he sat by the cars. Not for the first time, Teddy cursed his missing leg for taking so many things away from him. He could've been standing there next to Carl shooting a gun as well, but instead, all he could do was watch and feel sorry for himself. Which was not something he enjoyed doing.

He was so caught up in his sorrows and glaring down at his leg that he didn't notice Mr. Grimes coming up next to him until the man spoke.

"Want to give it a go?"

Teddy looked up in surprise, blinking stupidly up at the man. He then looked at Mr. Grimes's hands, surprised to see the man holding out one of the guns to him. 

"Huh?" Teddy furrowed his brows, wondering if he heard the man correctly.

"I said, do you wanna give it a go." Mr. Grimes repeated, a smile forming on his face.

"You mean... I can shoot it?" Teddy asked, unable to keep the excitement out of his voice.

"Of course, but someone will have to hold onto you to keep you steady," the man said a little sheepishly, "can't have you fallin' over every time you shoot, after all. S'that okay with you?"

Teddy nodded, grinning widely, his spirits already lifting. "Cool! I'm.. I'm okay with that!"

Mr. Grimes took him to the side where Carl was, keeping one hand on Teddy's shoulder. Carl did a doubletake when he saw Teddy there, but in seconds there was a wide grin spreading across his face. Behind him, Mrs. Grimes watched on, a disapproving look in her eyes but did nothing to intervene as Mr. Grimes placed the gun in Teddy's hands, putting his hands on Teddy's shoulders and his chest to Teddy's back to keep him from falling down.

"Hold it with your dominant hand," Mr. Grimes explained, and Teddy shifted the gun from his right hand to his left, trying to ignore the feel of his crutches digging into his armpits. "Good, now take your right hand and wrap it around the grip. Make sure your arms are mostly straight with only a little bend at the elbows."

"Like this?" Teddy asked, glancing back slightly. Mr. Grimes nodded, smiling down at him. 

"Yes, that's perfect," Mr. Grimes assured him, "now the next thing you want to do is close one of your eyes, the non-dominant one, this makes it easier to aim. Once you do that, do you see the three dots on the top of the gun?" Teddy nodded, raising the gun somewhat so he could find the dots. "Good, now I want you to keep the three of them aligned, once you've done that, take aim at the target, and shoot." 

Teddy's eyes lock onto the target of his choice almost instantly -- one of the green wine bottles that had been collected as targets. He does just as Mr. Grimes said, he aligned the three dots, closed an eye, took aim, and after a few moments of hesitation, he fired. 

_ Boom! _

There was the sound of glass shattering, and Teddy fell back into Mr. Grimes' chest, his crutches falling to the ground. The man grabbed him, pulling him up and steadying him before he could fall, but Teddy couldn't care less, only staring with wide eyes at the place his target had just been, now lying in a hundred shattered pieces in the grass.

He'd hit it.

Teddy could only stare for a few moments, then he laughed, a broad smile spreading across his face. "I hit it!"

Carl cheered, and Teddy flushed as a few others did the same, but was grinning widely all the same.  _ He'd hit it! _

Mr. Grimes laughed from behind him, sounding just as delighted as Teddy felt, "indeed you did, now, want to give it another go?"

"Are you kidding me?" Teddy asked, another laugh bubbling from his lips. "Of course, I want to go again!"


	11. Shut The Barn Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 7000 words instead of the usual 4000, damn. I'm proud of myself!
> 
> Anyways, enjoy this extra long chapter!

The moment that he had set foot back into the house later that evening, Teddy knew that something had happened while he was gone. 

Teddy had gotten back to the house without any trouble. He had been going back to the house with a smile on his face, feeling more alive than he had in months. Teddy had been humming a tune that his gran used to sing to him, something that he hadn't done since his birthday, and had just started going back up the porch when Hershel came out the front door, an angered expression on his face. 

Teddy had stopped in his tracks, immediately sensing that something was off. "Hershel..." he said in a hesitant voice, "is... is somethin' wrong?" 

"Teddy," Hershel said in a low voice, thick with anger and brimming with displeasure. "Just what was going on out there, where have you and Beth been?" 

Teddy shifted slightly, confused. Then he peered behind Hershel, catching sight of a sheepish looking Beth standing at the doorway behind her father. "We haven't been doin' anything wrong, Daddy," she promised, and judging by the tiredness in her tone, this wasn't the first time she'd said this. "Teddy and I just wanted to watch some of Rick's group practice shooting. Nothing bad happened."

Huh, Beth was a good liar. If he didn't know any better and wasn't currently kind of fearing for his life, he might've actually believed her. 

Despite her reassurances, Hershel pressed his lips together in a hard line, looking tenser than ever. "They are _ strangers, _ Beth. And they aren't staying here for much longer. So don't get attached." His eyes landed on Teddy. "The same goes for you."

Teddy started to protest. "But-" 

"I don't want to hear it from either of you. Go to your rooms, I've had enough of you two and Maggie today." Hershel ordered, turning away.

Teddy scowled but trudged his way up the rest of the porches steps, slipping past Hershel and Beth with a huff, his previous good mood completely evaporating. Beth followed him after a few moments, hovering behind him anxiously as he struggled up the stairs. He was almost at the top when she finally spoke.

"What do you think Maggie did to get Daddy mad at him?" Beth pondered as she watched her father stalk away, her brows furrowed in thought. Teddy shrugged as best he could, struggling to put his crutches up to the next step. Beth grabbed him by the arm, hauling him up and giving him a small boost. 

"I dunno," Teddy responded, "But whatever it is, it's got him pretty pissed off."

Beth hummed in response, glancing down the hall at the door leading to one of the bedrooms, Maggie's bedroom if his memory served him right. She waited for him to get to the next step before starting down the hall, stopping at her sister's door and knocking on it. Teddy followed her, not in the mood to go back to his own 'room.' He had just reached the blonde when Maggie swung the door open, a scowl on her face that quickly faded upon spotting Beth and Teddy.

"Oh, it's just you." Maggie sighed, leaning against the doorframe. "Thought that Daddy was coming back to yell at me some more." 

"Actually," Beth started, glancing back at Teddy, "what is up with Daddy? I don't think I've seen him like this since Mom and Shawn..." she trailed off, the message clear. "He said you did something, but we didn't really get the chance to ask before he sent us up here."

Maggie rolled her eyes at this, sighing heavily. She took a step back, allowing both Beth and Teddy to slip inside. Beth took a seat at the desk, while Teddy chose to plop down on the floor next to her. As soon as the door clicked shut behind them, Maggie sat down on the bed, pursing her lips and running a hand through her hair. After a few moments of tense silence, she said: "Glenn knows about our family being in..." she then looked toward Teddy, an uncertain expression crossing her face. "You know." 

No, he didn't know.

"What?" Beth, on the other hand, looked horrified, immediately understanding what her sister was telling her, unlike Teddy. "They know?"

"Just Glenn and Dale," Maggie said, gaze moving toward Beth, "but who knows how long it'll take for the rest to figure it out. Or for one of them to say something to the rest of their group."

Oh... 

She was talking about the barn.

Huh.

"Wait, you're talking about the monsters in the barn, right?" Teddy asked, taking the two girls by surprise.

"How...?" Beth was the first to speak, and Teddy shrugged, grinning sheepishly.

"They smell really, really,  _ really _ bad, especially when there's a lot of them, it's kind of hard  _ not _ to notice." He explained. "I'm honestly kind of surprised it took this long for someone from Mr. Grimes' group to find out."

The two girls exchanged glances. They were both obviously very agitated by this. Then again, they still believed there might be a chance for their family to get better, so he could definitely understand where they were coming from. Mr. Grimes' group would just shoot monsters on sight, so if they learned that there were monsters in the barn...

It would be chaos.

The first thing that Mr. Grimes' group would try to do was shoot the monsters despite whether Hershel agreed to it or not. And while Teddy did think that they shouldn't even be in the barn in the first place: in Beth, Jimmy, Hershel, Patricia, and Maggie's eyes, shooting the monsters would be the equivalent of killing their family. Which he could definitely understand.

"How many are even in there, anyway?" Teddy asked, cocking his head. "Is it just people you know or...?"

"Shawn and Mom are in there." Maggie started hesitantly, obviously not sure whether she should be telling this to him or not. Apparently, she decided to just go for it, seeing as she continued on. "As well as a few of our neighbors that wandered over here. We also have a few sick ones that we found wandering the forest, but if I had to say a specific number, then fourteen, maybe more."

_ Well damn. _ That was unsettling. Teddy kind of regretted asking now.

"How exactly did Glenn find out?" Beth asked, her voice laced with suspicion as she peered at her sister. "You didn't tell him, did you?"

"Of course not!" Maggie hissed -- sounding enraged at even being accused of that. "I barely know him, Bethy, why would I tell him something like that?"

"Well, you have seemed to be getting awfully cozy with him lately," Teddy supplied, turning the brunette's attention to him. "I mean, you were practically on top of each other earlier today."

Maggie spluttered, looking horrified. "You saw that?!"

_ Oops.  _

Teddy really needed to learn to keep his mouth shut.

* * *

Teddy woke the next day before the sun had even risen out of the sky. He crept out of the house as quietly as he could, careful not to wake the still sleeping family inside. Teddy took a seat on the porch, watching as the world woke up all around him. The air surrounding him was crisp and welcoming, but he knew it wouldn't stay that way for long. As soon as the sun rose, it was going to be hot as hell. Still, he imagined it wouldn't be long for the cold to settle in, and after that, the winter. 

Teddy didn't know what winters were usually like in America, but what he did know was that Georgia's winters couldn't be nearly as bad as they were in England. Although he was pretty sure winter could get really bad in some other states. But at least he would be prepared for it then. 

He sighed, wrapping his arms around his legs and resting his chin on one of his knees. He worried his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to get his thoughts in order, but it was to little avail. His mind was a total mess, no matter what he did. A few seconds passed, and Teddy was forced to bite back another sigh, trying his best to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach that had been steadily growing as the hours went on. 

He didn't know what it was, but he'd been getting a bad feeling for a while now that something was going to happen, and that it wasn't going to be beneficial to them whatsoever. It had started sometime last night, though he had been able to overlook it before, but as time went on, it became impossible for him to ignore. It unnerved him, being worried about something that might not even occur. But he couldn't help it. Maybe Mr. Grimes' group learning about the barn was worrying him more than he had first thought. Which was weird seeing as he had no business whatsoever with the barn. 

Perhaps Beth and Maggie's worrying had rubbed off on him.

One of the porch steps let out a creaky groan, and Teddy's head snapped up, whirling around toward the steps. While he had been lost in his thoughts, one of the men from Mr. Grimes's group,  _ Glenn, _ he thought, had emerged from his tent and had made his way toward the house, his arm wrapped tight around his chest, face downturned, and his eyes unfocused. And Teddy forced himself to relax. 

He hadn't really gotten the chance to speak to Glenn, but he did know that Maggie had taken a shine to him, maybe even more than 'just a shine.' Teddy might be ten, but he wasn't as blind as people clearly thought he was. Maggie could deny that anything was happening between the two of them all she wanted, but Teddy saw. He saw more than people gave him credit for, like how the two of them were exchanging notes during dinner a few nights before. Or the tenseness that was in Maggie's shoulders when she came back into the house later that night, which was most likely after Glenn learned about the monsters in the barn, now that he thought about it.

Glenn walked up to the door his hand raised up as if he were about to knock. After a few seconds, the man let out a small sigh and let his hand drop down to his side, still totally unaware of Teddy sitting on the porch a little ways away. Teddy frowned a little at the man's behavior, from what he's seen of him, which granted wasn't a lot, Glenn was usually a very upbeat person. So to see him like this was a little worrying, even if Teddy hasn't really spoken to the man. Maybe it had something to do with the whole him finding out about the barn thing. That would explain why he looked so much like someone just murdered his pet puppy.

"Who shoved a stick up your ass?" Teddy piped up.

Glenn let out a yelp of fright, spinning around with his eyes wide and a hand reaching toward his belt where Teddy could only assume a knife or some sort of weapon was. Upon spotting Teddy sitting on the chair, Glenn visibly relaxed, letting out a whoosh of air, his shoulders slumping, and his hand dropping away from his belt. Teddy caught sight of a glimpse of metal as his shirt rode up a bit, which only confirmed his suspicions about there being a knife there.

"Jesus kid, don't do that, scared the sh-" Glenn paused, an embarrassed look crossing his face, "-you scared the crap out of me."

Oh, so he's one of those people who don't swear in front of kids. Good to know.

"You could'a just said shit, y'know," Teddy said, raising a brow, "my family swears around me all the time, so it's nothing new."

Glenn snorted, rubbing his face and yawning, "yeah, I can tell. Clearly rubbed off on you too."

"Yeah, I know," Teddy said, grinning at the man. 

Glenn returned the grin briefly, letting it fall several moments later. Teddy frowned again, cocking his head to the side and eyeing the man curiously. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah... I'm... I'm fine!" Glenn said hurriedly, shaking his head. "It's nothing to worry about, trust me."

Teddy raised an eyebrow, "bloody hell, you suck at lying, you know that?" Glenn winced, turning away. "Is this about the whole monsters in the barn thingy?"

"You know about that, then," Glenn said with a sigh. "You don't seem as pissed off as Maggie is about it."

Teddy shrugged. "It's not really any of my business, I've only really known the Greene's for like, a month. Two, if you count my time unconscious. Honestly, as long as none of the monsters find a way to get out, then I'm okay with it."

Glenn sighed again, "I already told Dale. And I honestly don't think it's going to be much longer until the rest find out."

"It'll be very chaotic once they do," Teddy replied.

Glenn huffed, nodding in agreement. "It's Shane that I'm worried about the most. He's going to totally flip out."

Teddy hummed, mind wandering to the rash man. Teddy hadn't seen much of him since yesterday back at the shooting lesson. Shane intimidated him quite a bit, but he didn't know what exactly to think of the man other than that. Teddy still hadn't spoken a word to him, though. 

"He's kind of scary," Teddy admitted after a moment, "Shane, I mean. Seems kind of..." he made a motion with his hands, "out of it." 

"Tell me about it," Glenn said with a smile. He looked back at where the rest of his group was making camp, quiet and undisturbed, his eyes landing on the tent that Teddy could only assume was Shane's. He was silent for a few long moments before sighing. "Can I ask you something?"

"You just did." Glenn snorted at this.

"I meant like..." Glenn leaned against the railing, a frown pulling at his lips. "Maggie told me that you had a big family. Before you came here, I mean."

Teddy blinked. Out of all the things for Glenn to say, he was not expecting it to be that. "I do, yes." Where the hell was this conversation even going? Also, why was his family popping up in a conversation between two people who didn't even know them? That's what Teddy really wanted to know.

Glenn looked out over the field, tapping his fingers against his leg and worrying his bottom lip. "So you've been around a lot of pregnant women then?"

Oh.

_ Oh. _

He knew what this was about.

"Yup," Teddy said, popping the 'p.' "Why are you asking?"

Glenn sighed heavily and rubbed at his arms. "So.. um, uh, Lori's pregnant, and I'm just wondering if... like, you know if-" Glenn trailed off, eyebrows furrowed as he struggled for the right words. "I think she needs help, and I know your a kid and all, but like... do you know anything that could help? Anything at all?"

Oh, okay, this was making a little bit more sense now. 

"I don't... what do you mean by help?" Teddy asked, furrowing his brows. "Because I know a few teas and stuff I could make that could probably help with morning sickness and stuff like that. Or do you mean something like when she actually has the baby?" While Ginny had both Albus and Lily as homebirths, Teddy had spent most of his time sitting around upstairs or trying to calm a panicking Harry down, so he honestly didn't know much about what happened while it was happening or after.

"Honestly, I don't..." Glenn trailed off. "Anything works, I guess."

Teddy stared out at the barn in the distance, listening carefully to the slowly waking world around them. He then looked back at Glenn, meeting his unsure gaze, and smiled sadly at him. "You'd have better luck asking Beth or Hershel, maybe Maggie, but seeing how pissed off Hershel is at you..."

"Yeah," Glenn looked down, shuffling his feet and adjusting his hat. "Yeah, I suppose your right."

* * *

He found Daryl in his tent a few hours later, cleaning his bow with the tent's flaps unzipped, probably to let all the hot air out.

The sun was high in the sky now, and the morning chill from before had almost completely dissipated. Instead, it was replaced with smoldering heat, which was dense and sticky all around them. Teddy could feel beads of sweat roll down his neck and forehead, causing strands of hair to stick to his skin like glue. It's horribly uncomfortable, and Teddy couldn't understand how little it affected everyone else. Maybe it was just because he was from Britain, where it was much colder, while everyone else here had lived in Georgia or America in general pretty much all their lives. 

That was probably it. Teddy wasn't sure if he could ever get used to it, though.

"What do you want?" Daryl grumbled as Teddy stopped by his tent, not even looking up from his bow as he spoke. "Aren't you supposed to be on house arrest or somethin?"

Teddy winced, a sheepish grin crossing over his face. He didn't even want to know how Daryl knew about that. Had the archer even been nearby when Hershel had been yelling at him and Beth? He didn't remember seeing him, but then again, he could've been hiding. Nothing seemed to slip past him despite how hard you tried to hide it. 

"I dunno, not really. Hershel never said anything about staying inside, and either way, he can't exactly ground me as he does with Beth and Maggie, remember?" Teddy's nose was beginning to itch, and he was really starting to wish he could scratch it, but his hands were a little busy with his crutches at the moment.

Daryl snorted, looking up from his bow to stare at Teddy through slitted eyes. "Any reason why you're hidin' from him then?"

"Wha-" he shook his head, "M'not hiding!" Teddy protested, scowling indignantly. Daryl scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"Right," he drawled, not even looking the slightest bit convinced, "and is there any reason why you decided to come here instead of literally anywhere else?" 

Teddy shrugged, a frown marring his face. "It doesn't matter, I... I can go if you'd like." 

He began to turn away, moving his crutches in the other direction to go back to the house or maybe to go find Carl when Daryl's voice stopped him. 

"Never said y'had to go," the man called out, and Teddy stopped in his tracks, looking back at him with wide eyes. 

"Huh?" Teddy wondered if he misheard him. Then, Daryl rolled his eyes, and he knew that he hadn't. 

"Boy, I'm not 'bout to be yelled at by yer crazy sister again if she catches you pushin' yourself to the brink of exhaustion just because I told you to fuck off." Daryl said, shifting slightly from where he sat. "Now, sit the fuck down 'fore you fall on your ass and hurt yourself even more." 

_ I don't think I've ever been around someone who curses as much as he does,  _ Teddy thought as he ducked into the tent after a moment's hesitation. _Then_ __ag_ ain, Uncle Ron does swear a lot when he doesn't realize I'm around.  _ Teddy seated himself a little ways away from where Daryl was, knowing that the man would probably want his personal space, but also out of view from anyone who might be passing by the tent. Despite what he said to Daryl, he really didn't want Hershel to know he was out here.

That didn't mean he was hiding from him, though, because he wasn't.

"What's the old man's deal anyway?" Daryl asked, returning his attention to the bow in his lap.

Teddy shrugged helplessly, even he wasn't all that sure as to why Hershel hated them so much. Maybe it was because of the monsters in the barn? That might be it. "I dunno, he just doesn't like you guys very much." 

"Can't say I blame the man," Daryl muttered. "We haven't done shit for him, only been causin' him trouble from the moment we set foot here."

Wow, talk about harsh.

"Do you really think that?" Teddy asked, a frown pulling at his face. Sure, a lot of stuff had started happening since they got here, but was that really this group's fault? 

Daryl just grunted, not responding to his question, only taking out a cloth from the bag next to him. He took a bottle of water next from the pack next, unscrewing the cap and wetting the rag in his hands. Teddy watched with interest as the archer placed the water bottle to the side and began to wipe his bow down, clearing all the mud, blood, and grime off of it the best he could. There's a look of annoyance on Daryl's face as the man put the rag down and ran his fingers over the bow, mumbling something under his breath before resoaking the towel and continuing on with his cleaning. 

They're silent for a few minutes, Daryl cleaning his bow while Teddy watched on curiously. He's still kind of surprised that Hershel didn't force the archer to stay on bed rest for a little while longer, seeing as he literally got shot in the head. Well, the bullet grazed his head, but the point still stands. He's also kind of curious about the weapon Daryl was cleaning. He kept calling it a bow in his mind, but it didn't look much like the ones he'd seen in muggle movies and pictures. It looked more like someone just plopped an ordinary bow onto a piece of metal, stuck a sight onto it, and called it a day. If that made any sense at all. 

Maybe it was some kind of muggle weapon Teddy didn't know about?

He wished Aunt Hermione were here. She'd know what it was.

"Hold this," Daryl grunted, snapping Teddy out of his thoughts. He's holding the bow out in front of him, an impatient look on his face, and it took Teddy a moment or two to realize that the archer was holding the bow out to him, as in he wanted him to take it, as in he wanted him to hold it. 

Surprised and a little confused, Teddy complied, taking the large bow into his arms and making a startled sound when he realized that the thing was much heavier than it had first looked. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but he had definitely thought it would be a little lighter. The thing probably weighed more than him! Daryl snorted at this as if expecting that reaction, and as soon as Teddy placed it into his lap, Daryl pulled his gaze away from him and drew his bag a little closer, beginning to look through it. Teddy, after a few moments, turned his eyes back to the bow now in his arms. The thing was huge! How was Daryl even able to lug it around all the time? Granted, the man was, without a doubt, much stronger than Teddy was and ever would be, so that was probably it. But still! Things should not be this heavy!

He really wished he could've put a feather-light charm on it or something, that would've made things so much easier. While Harry and his gran had taught him some magic to prepare him for Hogwarts, they had done it with wands, and Teddy didn't exactly have one with him at the moment, unfortunately. If he had, things would've been so much easier.

"C'mere," Daryl ordered, motioning for Teddy to come closer. Teddy complied, scooting closer to the man. Once he was close enough, Daryl handed him the still damp rag. "Take this, an' make sure that there ain't nothin' dirty left on it. Blood, dirt, mud, anything that I might'a missed. Then we'll oil it up, so it don't snag on anythin."

Teddy nodded, taking the rag into his hands and wiping it over the bow, trying to get into the areas where some leftover gunk still lay. Daryl watched him do this for a couple seconds, probably making sure that Teddy wasn't about to destroy his bow in some way before bringing the bow a little closer to him and running something over the string. It's wax, Teddy realized after a few moments. The two of them are sitting practically side by side now, but none of them say a word -- it doesn't feel weird either. Teddy usually hated long silences or silence in general, they always felt so... empty and lonely, and he just hated it. But this felt different than the silence he hated so much. More... comforting? He didn't know. It was hard to explain, honestly.

He eyed the bow, studying it as he ran the rag over its surface. It's mostly clean now, so Teddy doesn't really know if he should continue with the rag or not. But he's also a little curious about it still.

"What kind of bow is this?" Teddy asked, breaking the silence that had fallen between them.

Daryl paused, turning his gaze away from the bow to look at Teddy instead. His face is blank, and his eyes narrow as the seconds slowly pass by. "You don't know what this is?" 

"No... I don't. Should I?" 

"Nah, but most people do," Daryl responded, shaking his head and returning his attention back to the string. "It's a crossbow." 

Oh, so it does have a name, that's good to know.

"It looks really cool," Teddy said wistfully, "I wish I could use stuff like this!"

Daryl snorted, "you'd have much better luck with a compound bow or somethin' like that. This thing is bigger than you are."

Teddy scowled. "What? No, it's not!"

Daryl looked a little amused at this, but also a little confused, like he's not sure why Teddy's even there, and he shrugged. Shoulders tense as he continued on with the wax. Teddy watched him work for a few moments, unsure of whether he should continue with the rag or not. The crossbow looked clean enough. He couldn't  _ see  _ any more dirt on it.

"How long have you been using this?" Teddy said curiously after a while. Daryl looked up, staring at Teddy for a few long moments before shaking his head.

"Long time, been doin' it since I was smaller'n you, probably."

Teddy nodded, furrowing his brows at the man's words. "With a crossbow? I thought you said-"

"Not everyone was as small as you are at ten," Daryl interrupted, rolling his eyes. "And there's different kinds of em', I used one better suited for my age."

_ What is with him and calling me small?  _ Teddy wondered, wrinkling his nose.  _ I get it, I'm tiny, but he doesn't have to point it out all the time. _

"Your really good at it," Teddy said softly, a nervous grin on his face. 

Daryl scoffed, shaking his head. "Ain't really much to be good at. 'Sides, anyone who practices enough can be good at it." He paused before turning slightly and holding out the thing of wax he'd been using. "Here, take this."

Teddy took it with hesitant hands, staring at it for a little while, with his eyes narrowed. "...What do I do with it?"

"You saw what I did, just slide it over the string. No - not on the servings, do it right there." Daryl pointed toward a specific spot on the crossbow, which Teddy could only assume was the serving. Teddy moves the wax over there, sliding it across hesitantly, skirting around the area with uncertainty tinging his every movement. 

Daryl just watched, eyes narrowed as if he were waiting for Teddy to mess up with something. Which honestly might be what he was doing. Teddy wouldn't be all that surprised if it was. "Not in the middle," he said after a moment or two, "if you do that, the wax will get into the trigger box, could cause it to jam." 

Teddy nodded, correcting himself immediately. "How - um," Teddy paused, "what made you want to learn all this stuff?" He could see Daryl's shoulders tense a little bit, but then the man shrugged, grabbing his bag and digging his hand into it once more. He does this for a couple moments, pulling something out before turning to face Teddy again.

"There was no want. I needed too. For food and shit. Me an' my brother hunted a lot." Daryl had a brother? "Mostly, it was when we were kids. He stopped joining me sometime after that. Our old man taught us." His face darkened for a moment, a scowl marring his face. Upon seeing this, Teddy knew almost immediately that Daryl didn't have a good relationship with his father. Kind of like how Harry didn't have a good relationship with his aunt and uncle, though he was on better terms with his cousin nowadays. Harry didn't like talking about his childhood, but Teddy knew enough to know that it hadn't been good. Maybe Daryl had a similar experience?

Should he ask?

Teddy snuck a glance up at Daryl, who was now busy going through his bag once again. Harry never liked talking about his childhood. He always got all gloomy and angry when he did. Though it was never aimed at Teddy. Aunt Hermione always said it was because they hadn't treated him well, and that was why he didn't like talking about it. So it was probably the same with Daryl. 

Probably.

He was going to keep his mouth shut, just in case.

"Did you - um, like, kill stuff then?" Teddy asked, curiosity coloring his tone.

"Yup," Daryl responded, "deers, birds, squirrels, all that shit."

"Did you ever see a bear?" Teddy asked, leaning forward with his eyes wide. He'd never seen a bear, but he heard that they were really, really big.

Daryl looked a little confused but nodded. "Once or twice. Not a lot."

"Wicked," Teddy breathed, eyes wide with excitement. "That sounds so cool!"

Daryl shrugged, reaching out and taking the crossbow from Teddy. "I guess." He then took out a bottle of some kind, letting two drops from the liquid inside fall onto its side. After he did that, he spread it around, glancing up at Teddy as he did so. When he was done, he handed it back to Teddy. "Just drip a bit onto its side. Then spread it around once you've done that."

Teddy nodded, taking the bottle into his hands. "What is it?" He asked, letting a few drops fall onto the crossbow. 

"Oil," Daryl responded curtly. He reached out, tugging the crossbow a little closer, taking out another thing of oil from his bag. Once he did that, he started to do the same thing, only in some of the hard to get places on the crossbow. The ones that Teddy would have more trouble reaching.

"Would you um, uh-" Teddy shook his head, gritting his teeth as he tried to force the words out. "Could you... maybe-"

"Spit it out, boy. What is it?" Daryl was looking at him through narrowed eyes, and Teddy hesitated, suddenly unsure.

"N...nevermind," Teddy said, shaking his head, "it's stupid."

Daryl raised his brows, looking doubtful. "Just fucking say it. Don't have all day, y'know."

"Did-" Teddy snapped his mouth shut again, fixing his eyes on the bow. "I just-" But the words never manage to make it out of his mouth.

There's a sudden bout of yelling from outside the tent. Teddy stilled almost immediately, and he could see Daryl tensing up next to him as well. Teddy strained his ears, trying to figure out what was going on. He could hear Shane's voice in the mix of shouting, low and gruff, sounding angrier than Teddy's ever heard him before. Then Teddy heard Mr. Grimes voice join the fray, followed by Hershel's and Maggie's. There were a few other ones too, but Teddy stopped listening as soon as he heard Hershel and Maggie.

"Kid - the fuck are you doing?" Teddy almost doesn't hear Daryl, simply grabbing his crutches and forcing himself to his feet. 

Daryl was up in seconds, hefting his crossbow over his shoulders and shoving past Teddy. "Stay here."

"What? No! I can't-"

But Daryl had already left the tent, running off to find whatever the hell everyone was shouting about. Teddy mumbled a few curses under his breath.  _ Why does he think I'm going to be safer in a tent? _

Teddy stood there for a few seconds before hobbling out after Daryl. The man was already way ahead of him by the time Teddy had ducked out of the tent. But after a few moments stopped to stare at something that Teddy couldn't see. The archer does a doubletake upon seeing Teddy limping up from behind him and scowled.

"I thought I told you to stay inside." Daryl snapped, turning to glare at him.

Teddy just scowled, and if he could, probably would've crossed his arms. "I want to know what's goin' on!"

"They're at the barn," Daryl grunted, pointed toward the dilapidated building. Teddy peaked around the archer to get a glimpse. Sure enough, most of the group was gathered over there, the Greene's (as well as Jimmy and Patricia) included. 

"Looks like they're hollerin' at each other for some reason," Daryl grumbled, a flash of irritation crossing his face, "probably Shane stirrin' up somethin' again."

Again? 

"Shane scares me," Teddy admitted, letting out a squeak of surprise as Daryl hurried forward. "Hey, wait for me!"

Teddy hobbled off after him, grateful to see Daryl slow down slightly at his shout. The man had his crossbow in his arms now, the scowl on his face even harsher than before. He looked prepared for a fight of some sort, and while Teddy really hoped there wasn't, that was what looked like was happening now. Teddy really hated it when people fought and for a quick second reconsidered heading back to the house, but not for the first time, his curiosity and worry got the better of him.

He would, years later, look back on this day with sadness and grief and wonder if maybe it would have been better if he had gone back inside the house - if he had for once listened to what his gut was telling him instead of rushing forward into danger without thought like the curious ten-year-old that he was. He almost wished he hadn't. But he couldn't change things now, no matter how much he wished he could.

"Stay back a bit, kid," Daryl ordered, waving a hand behind him as they drew closer to the barn -- and to the arguing going on in front of it. Like Daryl had predicted, Shane was at the center of it all, shouting something about walkers (that was what they called monsters, right?) as Mrs. Grimes tried to calm him down. Teddy did a doubletake when he caught sight of Mr. Grimes, some sort of pole in his hands with a monster at the end of it.

Teddy felt his heart stop, felt the fear begin to rise up in his gut.

"What the fuck is goin' on here?" Daryl shouted, raising his crossbow. He spared a quick glance back at Teddy before returning his gaze to the chaos in front of him. Teddy peaked around him, meeting Carl's wide-eyed stare. The other boy looked just as fearful as Teddy currently felt.

"Rick here-" Shane spat out his name with a surprising amount of venom "-as well as the farmer decided to start filling the barn with walkers!"

"The fuck?" Daryl's face twisted into an expression of confusion and anger. He glanced toward the walker's connected to the poles, a look of disbelief on his face. "You going, crazy man? Someone else who still has some sanity left in them mind explain' this to me?"

"It's true," Teddy said quietly, Daryl whirled his head around to look at him, "about the monsters being in the barn. They're there."

He ignored the look of shock on Hershel's face. They would talk about that later, hopefully.

"Jesus Christ." Daryl shook his head, looking more and more pissed off by the second. "What the fuck is wrong with you people?" He's directing the last bit toward Hershel and his family before turning to look at Mr. Grimes. "An' you're helpin' them?"

Apparently, that was the end of the line for Shane, who let out a roar of rage before spinning around and shooting Mr. Grimes' monster in the chest multiple times, snarling and yelling. Teddy flinched back, eyes wide as Shane fired off bullet after bullet into the monster's chest, never hitting its head even once, screaming at Hershel before Mr. Grimes cut in, looking enraged.

"Shane, enough!"

"Hey, you right, man." Shane spat, striding forward, "that is enough." He raised his gun, shooting the monster Hershel had on his pole right in the head. The monster's body fell to the ground with a thud, and things went silent. For a few moments, it seemed as though the argument was over.

But Shane wasn't done. Far from it, as it seemed. He strode back toward the front of the group, a crazed look in his eyes as he began to shout.

"Enough risking our lives for a little girl who's gone!" He screamed, and Teddy saw Ms. Carol flinch back, a pained look in her eyes. In front of him, Daryl was bristling in rage. Shane just continued, seemingly oblivious to the emotions he was causing. "Enough! Living next to a farm filled with things that are trying to kill us! Enough!"

Mr. Grimes opened his mouth as if he were about to speak, but Shane whirled around on him as if sensing what his friend was about to do and snapped at him, voice laced with anger. "Rick, it ain't like it was before. Now, if y'all want to live - if you want to survive," he pointed toward the group, "you gotta fight for it!"

"I'm talkin' about fight. Right here! Right now!" He turned around without wasting a second, sprinting toward the barn doors with a determined and angry look on his face. People immediately began shouting, and Mr. Grimes looked just about ready to drop the pole he was holding to run off after Shane. But he didn't, instead yelling something to Hershel, who only sat on the ground, his face slack with a mix of realization and shock.

Shane began banging on the doors with some sort of muggle weapon that Teddy was unable to name, swinging at the lock continuously as the monster's groaning from inside got even louder by the second. People were screaming now, yelling at Shane to stop it, but the words seemed to blur together to Teddy. His ears were ringing now, and he could feel his throat begin to tighten. Everything was too loud, he could hardly breathe. It was all too much.

So why couldn't he move?

Shane broke the lock, throwing the plank of wood that was the last thing keeping the barn closed to the side. He hit the door a few times, walking back and pulling his gun out of its holster. A pair of hands closed around Teddy's arm, and he vaguely registered Beth pulling him back and positioning herself in front of him even as her body shook. His eyes remained fixed on the barn as it's doors slowly began to swing open. A pair of rotted hands were the first thing Teddy saw, and then a rotted face as the first monster stumbled into view.

After the first monster appeared, more and more begin to spill out of the barn at a rapid pace, and then the gunshots start. First, it's T-Dog, Glenn, Andrea, and Shane who start shooting, taking the monsters down one by one, one after another after another, each of the monsters hitting the dirt with a thud after the fatal shot to the head. And then a few others join in, albeit reluctantly. Mrs. Grimes held Carl to her chest, staring at the scene with horrified eyes, Dale stood near the back - looking just as horrified.

In front of Teddy, Beth fell to her knees suddenly, a sob escaping her lips as one of the monsters - a blond woman - was shot, falling to the ground with the others. It was her mother, he realized after a moment.

She just watched her mother get shot in front of her.

Jimmy rushed forward, taking Beth into his arms, and she clung to him as if he were her lifeline, sobbing and gasping as she curled up into his chest. 

Shane turned slightly, looking Mr. Grimes for a few seconds before shooting the monster connected to the pole he had been holding. Mr. Grimes let the body fall to the ground, staring at it for a few seconds before joining in on the massacre, looking pissed off. Something that took Teddy by surprised. He'd never seen Carl's father be anything but calm and collected. But it seemed as though everyone had a breaking point.

Teddy's eyes then wander back to the barn still pouring with walkers, mind numb with shock, but then his mind seemed to stop working as another one of the monsters stumble out from the barn. It was a woman - thin, a gaunt face, dark brown curls tinged with grey... nobody in the group spared her a second glance, just firing off their guns as more and more monsters pour out, but Teddy-

Teddy felt his world shattering around him.

_ "Gran?" _


	12. Heartache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 6000 WORDS 
> 
> WHAT THE HELL
> 
> THESE CHAPTERS ARE GETTING LONGER AND LONGER

Teddy remembered hearing Aunt Hermione say one time a few years ago that, in times of great stress or great fear, that the human brain would start seeing things in slow motion so it could process everything that was going on around them. Teddy hadn't believed a word of it at first, had simply thought that was only stuff in movies or shows that were there to make things seem way cooler than they actually were - he had believed that it was something people had made up, that it was complete and utter bullshit and all that jazz.

But it wasn't, he knew that now. 

Aunt Hermione had been right, as always. 

And honestly, he should've known. 

By the time Shane had first opened the barn doors, by the time the first monster had emerged from its depths, by the time he had first spotted his gran stumbling out of the barn, time seemed to freeze in place, everything slowing down as if it were giving Teddy time for him to process just what was going on.

As if it wanted him to realize that what he was seeing was the truth.

But despite this, Teddy still couldn't believe his eyes, couldn't believe what he was seeing because it-

The thing is, he knew just what he was seeing. Knew just what was going on right in front of him, knew just what was happening and what it meant - he wasn't blind nor was he stupid. But he still couldn't believe it - couldn't believe that his gran was one of the monsters in the barn, that she was one of the dead. Because that's just the thing, this wasn't real. He couldn't believe it because this wasn't real - it just couldn't be. There was no way that his gran could be dead. There's no way she was gone because she's all that he has left. He can't lose her, he just couldn't!

What this is was just one long, horrible nightmare, one that he would wake up from in only a few minutes or seconds that would scare the hell out of him, but he'd get over it and forget about it by the time he went to sleep later that night because _this wasn't real,_ it just couldn't be. It couldn't be real because... because-

Because wasn't him losing his parents enough?

Hadn't he lost enough?

The barn was still streaming with the dead, more and more coming out by the second, much more than what Maggie had first said. Gunshots were ringing out all over the place, the monsters continuing to drop dead with each and every shot. There's a horrific sense of fear hanging in the air, accompanied by a mix of disbelief and terror that would fit right into any one of those super cliché muggle horror films that Teddy's seen with Victoire and Uncle George whenever Harry wasn't looking. Except this wasn't a film - this was real. Except it couldn't be real. His gran stumbled out from the barn, teeth clicking together and groaning hungrily, but it wasn't real, it can't be real, because if it was-

If it was-

If it was-

If it was, then his gran was dead.

If this was real, that meant she was dead, and-

And...

He'd be all alone.

Teddy vaguely registered the voices around him, screaming out words that could be meaning anything really. He can hear Carl shouting something from where he lay curled up in his mother's arms, can see his friend's hands shaking and his body trembling in the corner of his eye, can see Beth sobbing hysterically in Jimmy's arms, and then there's Maggie, trembling and crying and clinging to her father, tears streaming down her face and entirely unlike what he's seen of her so far, always so ready to spring into action or say some witty joke or sarcastic remark and-

-and he's falling to his knees, crutches tumbling down at his sides, and he stared - wide-eyed and disbelieving - ignoring the crutches because, at that moment, all he can see was his gran lurching out from the barn, teeth bared and eyes horribly dull, lifeless. A memory of his gran only a couple months ago came to mind, of her laughing and helping him with his spellwork as Harry and Ginny watched on a few feet away, Ginny still heavily pregnant with Lily while Albus and James slept in Harry's arms. That day felt like a lifetime ago at this point. So much had happened since then and...

Another gunshot rang out, and one of the bullets hit his gran right in the head. Teddy watched with a numb horror as a cascade of blood burst from the side of her sickly gray, much too pale face; watched her fall into the dust and dirt with a distorted thud - no different than the rest of the monsters now surrounding her. It was Shane who fired off the shot that killed her, he realized after a moment. It was Shane who opened the barn door and caused all this. But Teddy can't bring himself to feel mad at him, to feel anything remotely negative or positive at the man because, as of now, the only thing he was paying attention to was the motionless form of his grandmother in the rapidly growing pile of dead monsters.

After a few seconds, he heard the sound of someone screaming.

It took Teddy another few seconds to realize that it's him.

* * *

_"Gran?" He called out quietly, peering into the kitchen with wide eyes. He took a few hesitant steps until he was standing in the doorway, shifting his feet nervously as he came into view. "What's for dinner?"_

_His gran jumped in surprise at the sound of his voice, clearly having not heard him come up, and turned around toward him with wide grey eyes - much lighter than his own - before a soft smile spread across his lips at the sight of him. Her long greying curls were put up into a neat bun, and a few strands had fallen into her face while she'd been working._

_There was a cutting knife in her hand, a wand in the other. Two empty pots were hovering above her, bobbing up and down with a steady rhythm, and Teddy was able to spy a half cut carrot on the chopping board behind her. Were they having soup again? Teddy tried not to feel too annoyed at this. He loved his gran's soup, really, but he would have preferred something else that wasn't soup for a change. Like pizza or something, he liked pizza._

_His gran heaved a great sigh, drawing his attention back to his grandmother, who was shaking her head and placing the knife she was using to cut the carrots back down onto the counter. "Don't do that to me, Edward," she scolded, "you're going to give me a heart attack one of these days."_

_"Sorry, Gran," he said apologetically, dipping his head, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. "I keep forgetting."_

_"Oh, it's alright, dear," his gran shook her head fondly, striding forward to plant a kiss on his forehead. She then ruffled his hair, running her head through his messy curls, and Teddy wrinkled his nose, swatting her hands away from his head as his hair flushed a mix of bright red, pink, orange, and green. To her credit, his gran didn't even flinch at the sudden array of bright colors as most would have. Then again, she probably had been dealing with blindingly bright colors since she had his mother, so she's probably already used to it at this point._

_"Gran," he whined, "stop it!" He pouted, crossing his arms, and the woman just laughed, smiling widely before turning back to the kitchen counter, picking up the knife she had left by the board and going back to cutting the carrots._

_"Oh, hush," she said, rolling her eyes, "now, come over here, love. I need some help with dinner."_

_Teddy swiftly obliged, darting over and pulling up a stepping stool. He clambered on top of it, swaying slightly before reaching out and grabbing the counter, steadying himself. Once he had done this, his gran passed him a bowl filled with a bunch of weird looking food and sauces with the firm orders of-_

_"Start mixing!"_

_"Gran!" Teddy whined petulantly, like the little seven-year-old he was, and his gran simply passed him a spoon, which he reluctantly took, a scowl marring his tiny face. "You know I'm just gonna make a mess! I can help with the chopping. I'm so much better at that. I'm not going to hurt myself with the knife, you know!"_

_His gran only smirked, turning to look at him before placing her hands onto her hips and saying: "Well, you'll never stop making messes while mixing if you just stop trying. You just need more practice. This is the only way you can learn, love."_

_Teddy wrinkled his nose, turning his head and staring down at the bowl right in front of him. "What are we even making?"_

_His gran shook her head, an amused and exasperated expression on her face. "It's a casserole, Teddy. Lyall taught me how to make one a few months back while you were at Harry's. I tried some of his, and it's quite lovely, I think you'll like it."_

_Teddy let a small grin spread across his face at the mention of his grandfather. He hadn't seen him in so long, and Grandpa Lyall always was the best at cooking. "Well, as long as it isn't soup."_

_His gran huffed, "I thought you liked my soup?"_

_"I do," Teddy responded hurriedly, trying to reassure his gran, "but you make it waaaaay too much!" He put the spoon back down on the counter, holding out his arms in a wide arc to emphasize what he meant._

_"I suppose I do," his gran said in resignation. "But clearly that's about to change," she winked at him, her lips quirking into a mischievous grin, and Teddy giggled before grinning back._

_"I love you, gran." He said, jumping down from the stool and wrapping his arms around her legs, seeing as he wasn't tall enough to give her a better hug._

_His gran leaned down after a few moments, arms winding tightly around him. She kissed his forehead, holding him close and whispered-_

_"I love you too, bug."_

* * *

For most of his relatively short life, Teddy had thought it was supposed to rain when people died.

Teddy didn't really know why he had this mindset. Maybe it was because it was often in the movies he had watched and the books that he had read, or perhaps he had just thought that rainy weather would fit the mood when people died. He wasn't entirely sure about his reasons for thinking that way, but it was what he had thought, at least, until now. Today had been quick to correct him about those thoughts. Practically slapping him in the face with it, really.

Even after the barn shoot out, the horses were still nickering, the roosters still crowing, the bugs still buzzing, and the sun was still shining, it's light bearing down on the farm mercilessly even as the adults started digging out the graves to bury the dead in. A task that was made much simpler when Glenn borrowed one of the farm tractors and used the blade to carve out various shallow holes in the ground to serve as graves. Carol and Mrs. Grimes work together to make wooden crosses for each of the dead, enlisting the help of Patricia to get all the names of their friends and neighbors. Carol had been in tears - shaking and sobbing as she carved her daughter's name onto one of the crosses.

While this was happening, Teddy was kneeling beside his gran's body, just staring at her with blank eyes, taking in the woman's rotted remains. She didn't look like a newer walker, and he knew what those looked like. No, his gran had clearly been this way for a while now, maybe even from the start. Had she though? Had, while Teddy was hiding away in the tree or unconscious in a bed after Maggie had found him, had she already been one of them? Wandering the forest as dead as the other walkers until Maggie, Hershel, or Otis found her and put her in the barn?

He reached out a hand, brushing his fingers through his gran's bloody hair - which was knotted and tangled - a choked sob escaping him. There was a bleeding chunk taken out of her arm, where she'd been bitten, and Teddy touched his fingers to the open wound on his gran's arm. His fingers came away bloody, but he could hardly care at the moment, only staring at the bite with watery eyes. It was the bite that killed her, the thing that took her away from him. It had killed her, and he had no idea it had happened up until now.

"Teddy...?"

Teddy glanced up, unable to muster even the smallest of smiles even when he saw Carl standing above him, hands tucked behind his back as if he's hiding something. Teddy doesn't bother asking what it was - something that usually would have been the first thing he did. Instead, he sighed, turning away and hanging his head as he tried to stop another onslaught of tears from raining down. His friend took a seat next to him, wide blue eyes raking over the motionless form sitting before them. After a few seconds of silence, Carl brought his hands out from behind his back, holding out several clusters of bright yellow and white flowers that Teddy's only caught glimpses of in the forest. He sent Teddy a nervous smile, and he reached out slowly, taking the flowers gently from Carl's shaking hands.

"Daryl says that they're called Cherokee Roses," Carl explained hurriedly to Teddy. He's red in the face as he says this, eyes bloodshot and red, but Teddy can't tell if it's from the heat, grief, or something else entirely. His friend was hunched over slightly, hugging his arms to his chest and staring at Teddy with an uncertain look on his face before glancing away, heaving a soft sigh. "M...me and my mom, we p...picked some for Sophia since-" He drew to a halt for a brief moment, voice cracking as he continued on "-you know... and I-I thought that you might want some too. Since she's your grandmother..."

Teddy studied the flowers, twirling them gently between his fingers before reaching out and tucking one behind his gran's ear, hand lingering on the woman's yellowed cheek. He placed the rest on her chest, folding her hands around them before leaning back. His hand finds Carl's, and the other boy doesn't hesitate to grab it, intertwining their fingers and holding on as tightly as he can. Teddy leaned into Carl, staring down at his gran as his eyes started to burn once again. He snuck a glance over at Carl, whose face was sullen and red from grief, anger, and tears.

"Thank you, Carl..." Teddy whispered softly into his ear, "I-I..." his eyes slammed shut as another sob wracked through him. "I think s-she'd like it... she's always l-loved flowers." 

It's quiet then, the air tainted with misery and grief, and it doesn't seem as if Carl had any desire to break it either - he simply nodded at his words, eyes raking over the woman's lifeless form. Teddy found that he couldn't tear his gaze away from her either, unable to stop thinking about how _dead_ she now looked. She looked nothing like the sweet woman who had helped raise him. She wasn't beautiful anymore, not kind looking or anything like that. Her eyes didn't sparkle with life or love, didn't glow with pride or amusement. What she looked like was a monster - like a walker - and that hurt so much more than it should've. He tore his eyes away, moving his gaze to where Dale was standing watch on the RV a few feet away. Then, he looked back at her, lip wobbling.

He prayed that she died fast.

He prayed that his gran didn't suffer in her last moments, that she went without any pain. But deep down, a part of him would always doubt it. He remembered how horrible he had felt after being bit himself. How much he wished for it all to just stop _hurting._ How his fever had raged on for over a week before the Greene's had found and saved him. Had that been what his gran felt like in her final moments? In so much pain that she could barely even think straight? That she could hardly even move?

"She hated it when her hair was dirty," Teddy said suddenly, and Carl sent him a questioning stare but otherwise didn't do or say anything else. Teddy took this as a sign to continue. "She was super vain when it came to that, and she f-fucking hated my hair." Teddy let out a bitter laugh, wiping his eyes. "It was always so c-curly and shit, and it grew so f-fast, and it drove her c-crazy."

"She sounded nice." He said after a second. "I mean... from what you've told me."

Teddy nodded, throat tightening and his pulse racing, and he settled a hand on the fabric of his jeans, gripping them tightly as he took in a steadying inhale.

"She w-was," he said, voice sad, and Carl shot him a quick, worried look. "She was always k-kind of dramatic, though. Really f-funny too. But she was also r-really strict at t-times. I always hated it, b-but now..."

_I would give anything to have her back._

"I miss her."

* * *

_He wished he could have told her how much he loved her before she-_

_He wished that he hadn't been so stupid, so rude, so childish, and-_

_He wished for so much..._

_He wished he could have said sorry for being such a bratty grandson, thank her for everything she's done for him, tell her that he loved her, and-_

_He wished he could've said goodbye._

* * *

For the next few minutes, they just sit there, not saying a single word. The silence was suffocating, but Teddy couldn't bring himself to say a single word. It turned out that he didn't need to, as Mrs. Grimes came a little later to take Carl back into the house. His friend protested at first, but then Mrs. Grimes had murmured something to him that caused him to comply, and Teddy couldn't have cared less what it had been about. 

In the distance, Beth was picking flowers - sniffling and crying - with Carol and Maggie while Mr. Grimes, Shane, Daryl, Glenn, Andrea, and T-Dog work together to dig the graves. The dust had settled just about everywhere with the exception of Teddy's mind, which was racing with thoughts, images, ideas, and-

_This is all my fault._

This all happened because of him. If he hadn't run off to go to the bathroom without telling his gran, then he would've been with her when things went to shit, and maybe if he'd been with her, she'd still be alive. If he'd been with her, they would've gone back to the hotel room, and when the chaos started the next morning, she could have just apparated them back home to England - and they would both be safe and sound in their home. Teddy would still have his leg, and his gran would have her life.

But instead, he had run off without telling her. He'd gone off because he'd been impatient and didn't want to wait any longer. And knowing his gran, she had left to go looking for him. Hell, she probably had been outside when the walkers first started appearing, and that was most likely what had killed her. If Teddy hadn't run off, then they would have been back home by now, safe and sound, and happy, and with their family, and none of this would have happened and-

-Teddy stopped that train of thought from going any further, his mind pulling to a stop (this time it was intentional) and shook his head to try and clear his racing thoughts. Because something that Harry's always told him was not to blame himself for things that weren't his fault. When Teddy had believed that his parents died because of him, Harry had taken him to the side and assured him that was not the case. His mind was a total mess - he's grieving - that was understandable - but he didn't need to add more strife to it if he didn't need too. That was what Harry had said.

But _still._

He's shaking now, his breathing coming in short, drawn-out gasps as tears once again start streaming down his face. Something red, hot, and awful was churning in his gut - pulsing in his ears and mind and clenching and unclenching his fists. His head was full of cotton, and a small voice tucked away in his mind that hadn't been there before was telling him to just grab one of the guns lying around and _shoot-_

This wasn't _fair._ Teddy and his gran used to cook together and read together, and it's just not any fucking fair because hadn't Teddy lost enough? Hadn't enough been taken away from him. Why did his gran have to be taken away from him too? What the hell did he do to deserve something like this?

The adults were beginning to put the bodies in the graves now, and Teddy knew it was only a matter of time before they buried his gran. Still, he refused to move from her body. Despite how hot it now was, and despite how much it reeked of rot, Teddy's too confused and scared and alone to really give a damn. He just wanted to stay by her for as long as he could before they came to bury her. Was that too much to ask for now? Teddy's drawn back to the present by the sound of slow footsteps coming up behind him, stopping for a moment before a hesitant voice called out.

"Teddy...?" It was Maggie. He didn't have to turn around to know that. "It's time.

"I-I know... I just-" Teddy squeezed his eyes shut, inhaling slowly. "Just give me a few more minutes... please."

For once, when Maggie was asked to do something, she actually does so without argument. She walked away, and Teddy allowed himself to feel a little grateful. When he no longer heard her footsteps anywhere nearby, he reached out, running his hands once more through his gran's hair, adjusting the flowers before burying his head in his hands, trying to breathe through the pain in his chest.

He's grateful for the flowers, despite not really saying it. Hell, he hadn't even thought of doing that for his gran - too caught up in his shock and grief to even think of something like that, so he's grateful that Carl did. In most cases, witches and wizards would be buried with their wands with them because, according to his gran, this allowed the witches or wizard's spirit to fly free before being reborn as a magical being once more, but flowers were the only thing they had right now so-

Wait.

Teddy sat up, removing his hands from his face, his eyes going wide.

_Her wand._

If his memory was serving him correctly, his gran usually kept her wand in a holster on her arm, one that had been fastened with a sticking charm so it wouldn't fall out unless she took it out. So unless his gran had lost it sometime before turning into a walker, which he honestly doubted, then she should still have it...

Teddy allowed his eyes to drift to his gran's arms before slowly reached out, taking her left arm and pulling down her sleeve. As expected, the holster was still attached to her arm, seeing as the only way it could be taken off was if she chose to. With bated breath, he turned her arm over, eyes widening when he caught sight of the familiar wood tucked inside. It was there. Her wand was there.

After a few seconds, Teddy cautiously reached out for the wand, breathing a sigh of relief at the warmth that flooded through him the moment the wand touched his hand. Wrapping his fingers around the thin piece of wood, he removed it from the holster, waving it in front of his face and watching as yellow and blue sparks erupted from it. Teddy couldn't help but let a soft smile spread across his face at the familiar feel of magic thrumming through him. He had missed this feeling so much more than he had realized.

_I wonder..._

Glancing around at everyone else to make sure they were all busy, Teddy turned back to the wand, whispering a quiet, "Lumos," while remembering the lessons that Harry and his gran had given to him before.

As expected, the tip of the wand glowed with light, nearly blinding Teddy, and he whispered a quick "Nox," before anyone around him could notice. Nervously glancing around, he was relieved to find that not one person had looked his way while he'd been using it. 

Absentmindedly, he placed the wand in his lap, reaching out to unfasten the holster from her arm. When he had it in his hands, he paused, frowning. Was he really taking his gran's wand? He looked down at it, a pang of disbelief rushing through him. It felt so... disrespectful to do something like that. Just taking his gran's wand from her corpse. But on the other hand, he needed it too. He might not know a whole lot of spells outside of the ones Harry, Ginny, Aunt Hermione, and his gran taught him, but if things get ugly, he could use it to protect himself.

His fingers tightened around the wand: a hawthorn one if his memory served him right - with a dragon heartstring core. Looking down at his gran, he worried his bottom lip between his teeth. Teddy knew what the smart thing to do was: take the wand, he'd need it after all. And his gran always said to be smart in these kinds of situations. She dedicated the last ten years into raising and protecting him, so she'd want him to take it, wouldn't she? 

_She would._

Making his decision, Teddy fastened the holster around his arm, adjusting the straps so it would fit around his much smaller arm. When he was satisfied it wasn't about to slip off, he tucked the wand inside before covering the holster with his sleeve. A thread of guilt began gnawing at him as he did this, but he forced himself to push it away as he caught sight of Maggie approaching him again. 

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes, which were once again starting to well with tears.

It was time.

* * *

It was well into the afternoon when they had gotten all the graves dug out - for the important people, at least - judging by the smell of burning rot now hanging in the air, they had burned the rest of them. Beth and Maggie's mother and brother were to be buried under the shade of a giant oak tree next to Carol's daughter, and Teddy's gran wasn't too far away. Teddy's been under this tree occasionally, mostly just to read books or hang out in the fresh air before Hershel or Patricia or Maggie dragged him back inside. It was a pretty spot, and Teddy was satisfied that his gran would at least have a peaceful resting place. 

Teddy stood beside Beth while the others took their spots by the graves. His crutches were tucked back under his arms. But his whole body was shaking, and he felt as if he were about to collapse either way. Maggie was on his other side, keeping a hand on his arm to keep him steady, though she looked on the verge of tears as well. 

One by one, everyone went up to say their goodbyes to the people they knew. Carol's goodbye had been the most heartbreaking to watch by far, and Teddy could only imagine how much worse the woman must've felt at this moment. He briefly considered telling the woman about his gran's own experience of losing her daughter, but he ultimately chose not to. The pain was still much too fresh for all of them, so he kept his mouth shut.

The atmosphere was heavy with loss, and for a good reason too. Teddy watched numbly as each person said their goodbyes, watched as they slowly - one by one - drifted away until only Teddy and Maggie stood in front of the four graves, all alone in the darkening world. 

Slowly, he forced himself forward, kneeling down with some trouble beside her grave. He heard Maggie follow him, silent as he reached out, tracing the name etched onto his gran's cross. He didn't look back, though. He just stared right at the wooden cross, a feeling of disbelief and grief churning in his gut. 

He made a choked sound at the back of his throat, a sob breaking through moments later. Maggie took a tentative step forward, kneeling down beside him but not saying a single word. Slowly, she reached out, wrapping an arm around his shoulder and pulling him into her side - not hugging him exactly, but something similar to it. Either way, the gesture was more comforting than it should have been, and he leaned into her without hesitation, needing that comfort more than anything else in the world right now. 

"She tried so hard for me..." Teddy said softly to her after a few minutes of them sitting there in silence. He sunk his fingers into the loose dirt, trying to get a grip on his rapidly collapsing composure. "S-she wasn't happy a lot of the time. I didn't understand it at first - I was mad at her about it, actually. But she fought so hard for me... she did so much." He reached up a hand to wipe the tears from his eyes, and Maggie's arm tightened around him. "...when.... when my parents died, I-I wasn't the only one who lost something... she lost her daughter - her son-in-law - and... and she still managed to take care of me despite it."

"She sounded like a good woman," Maggie whispered into the silence. 

Teddy nodded, a small smile - pained though it was - spreading across his face. "She was. And she was strong, too." He glanced up at the sky, taking in the sun setting in the distance before looking back to the grave. "My... my grandfather, h-he died only a few months before my parents did. Murdered, actually." Beside him, Maggie inhaled sharply, having not known that before. "And m...my parents were murdered as well, my mother was k...killed by her own aunt. By my gran's sister."

"And... and yet, when her sister died, my gran still grieved for her." Teddy shook his head, biting his lip before continuing on. "I didn't understand it at first. She murdered my mother, my gran's daughter, I remembered thinking, 'how could she still love the woman who took her own daughter from her?' I remembered thinking that and... just not understanding."

"Sometimes you can't help who you love." Maggie offered weakly - hesitantly - and Teddy looked up at her, his eyes sharp. "Your grandmother's sister, she was her family despite the things she did, and I don't think I could ever stop loving Beth even if she did something like... that." She glanced back toward the house briefly before turning her gaze back to him, green eyes searching.

"I know that now," he agreed after a moment, albeit reluctantly, "but I don't think I'll ever stop hating the woman who took my mom from me. Even if I'm related to her. I just hate her."

"And you have a good reason to do that," Maggie assured him, "it's not a bad thing that you hate her for it." 

Teddy nodded again, blinking back the tears that were on the verge of falling. He could feel his shoulders shaking, and he had little doubt that Maggie saw it too. But he couldn't care less about who saw it. He should be allowed to cry without worrying about what people thought. Another choked sound escaped his lips, and he buried his face into his hands. Maggie's arms wound tighter around him, pulling him into a hug. She rested her chin onto the top of his head, and he let her. Too exhausted - both physically and emotionally - to do anything else.

"I just - this is it, isn't it?" Teddy choked out. "The world isn't going back to normal, I'm never going to see the rest of my family again. I-" he buried his head into Maggie's shirt, his body trembling as sobs racked his body, "I won't even know if... if they die or not and-" he slammed his eyes shut, hiccuping softly with tears streaming down his face as his composure all but shattered, "what am I supposed to do? I'm only ten! I'm missing a fucking leg, and... and it's the end of the world, and my whole family could be dead for all I know! And what chance do _I_ stand? I'll probably be dead by this time next year!"

Maggie was silent for a few long moments, just running a hand through his hair as she contemplated his words. Slowly, she took in a deep breath. Then Maggie leaned back, wiping his face with a tissue (where did she even get that?), and while Teddy would have usually protested to such a thing, he let her without any complaints.

"Hey, don't talk like that," she said in a strangled voice, "you're not going to be dying anytime soon. We won't let that happen. And your family... they might be dead, but from what you've said about them, they're a tough bunch, so they also might not be." Teddy stared up at her with glassy eyes, lips quivering as he processed her words. He could only imagine how he must look to her. A complete mess, probably. "Listen, Teddy, we might not be able to get you back to your family, but that doesn't mean we won't keep you safe. I don't think I can ever make up for... this," she glanced down at the grave before them, swallowing uncertainly, "but that doesn't mean your alone. We'll all stick together. You, me, Beth, Daddy, Jimmy, Patricia, and who knows, maybe the people from Rick's group will too. But you're not alone, got it?"

Teddy tilted his head, staring down at his lap and picking at a loose string in his jeans. Then, he glanced up, staring at Maggie with wide eyes, and, to his own surprise, found that a small smile had spread across his face. 

"You promise?" Teddy sniffled, his voice hoarse as he spoke. 

"Pinky promise," Maggie said with a wink, holding her pinkie finger up toward his face jokingly. Teddy couldn't help the giggle that escaped from him, reaching up to wrap his pinkie around hers. 

An unexpected warmth flooded through him. And while there was still a lingering darkness waiting in the back of his mind, Teddy found that things were feeling slightly less hopeless than before. 

There was no point in worrying over what might happen.

It was enough that they were all here - alive and together. 


	13. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh god I am SO sorry this took so long. I've been so busy with some of my other stories that I forgot about this one for a bit.

The dark of the deceased Shawn Greene's room wasn't comforting. The opposite, really. All dark and gloomy with its curtains drawn shut and the lights turned off, it was only yet another reminder of what they had lost in this new world ruled by the dead. But comfort wasn't what Teddy was searching for. With his mind continuously replaying the events of the past few hours on repeat: of the barn being opened, of his gran walking out, of her being shot, of the funeral -- as well as his thoughts wildly churning with all the what-if's and such, comfort was the last thing on his mind.

The dark had never been something Teddy was afraid of. He has better vision than most, thanks to his father, so it would have to be really dark for him to be completely blind. Still, the darkness wasn't really the loveliest thing in the world, and while he could just open the curtains to let the light in, he didn't have the energy for that now. Plus, the dark helped distract him, though it did nothing to cover the guilt inside of him that was eating him alive.

Teddy snorted. Eating him alive. What a joke. 

He sighed, resting his head on the pillow and staring up at the ceiling. There's yelling from somewhere downstairs. Or maybe outside. He couldn't tell, the window in the room was opened slightly, and the door wasn't completely closed. So he had no idea where the sound could be coming from. The adults had been arguing for the past ten minutes. Maybe even longer. And from the sound of things, they weren't going to be stopping anytime soon. 

He wasn't able to figure out what they were saying. Which was surprising considering how loud they were all being. He could, however, hear Shane's voice in the mix: low, rough, and horribly angry as he screamed at whoever it was who happened to earn his ire. Which was everyone, most likely. Mr. Grimes was yelling too. But the man was using a much quieter tone than his friend was, and that only seemed to make Shane even angrier. That man really seemed to have anger issues. But honestly, Teddy just wanted the both of them to shut the hell up. They weren't helping anyone at this point. Just aggravating them. Making people more stressed than they all already were.

After a few more minutes pass by, Teddy heaved a quiet sigh, pulling himself up into a sitting position. He glanced around the room, wiping the snot and tears from his face. He reached out, grabbing his crutches from where he rested them on the wall and wedged them underneath his arms -- which were already quite sore from how much he'd been using them that day. With a grimace on his face, Teddy forced himself into a standing position, hissing slightly as a streak of pain raced up from his stump. Actually, now that he thought about it, he should probably have the bandages changed.

Maybe later. Teddy didn't think that either Patricia or Hershel were in the mood to deal with him at the moment.

Speaking of which, it seemed that the old man had joined in on the yelling. His voice was higher pitched, a little lost, a little angry: and then suddenly booming and enraged. He jumped a little, breath catching. In the two (going on three) months that Teddy's been here at the Greene family farm, he hadn't once heard Hershel yell. Not even when he had been angry with him, Beth, and Maggie a few days before. Though it seemed that everyone had snapping points now, and Hershel had just hit his. 

He hobbled toward the door, leaning on the wall so he could reach a hand to get it open. As soon as the door creaked open, the shouting seemed to get much louder than before, and he cringed, resisting the urge to cover his ears as he forced his crutches forward. With great care, Teddy crept as well as he could toward the staircase, grabbing the railings as soon as he got close enough. 

He peered down, not catching sight of anyone. Maybe they were somewhere else in the house -- or perhaps they were outside. Either way, Teddy could hear them much better now. Though he's not entirely sure why he wanted to do that in the first place. Teddy maneuvered himself onto his knees, wincing as another streak of pain ran through the stump. He should probably stop spending so much time on the floor. There was no way that it was good for him. 

"Don't touch him!" Maggie's voice suddenly shrieked. Teddy's head snapped up, eyes going wide with surprise. 

There's the sound of skin against skin following her loud outburst. And, for a split second, he thought that maybe she had punched someone, Shane maybe. But a few seconds passed by, and Teddy realized it was too loud to be a punch. A slap then. He's seen Ginny, as well as a few of his aunts, slap people before. (Mostly reporters or random witches and wizards who got too touchy with him or any of his cousins), so he knew what it sounded like.

Still, the sound made him jump, having not expected it to even occur in the first place. He twisted in his spot, almost violently, grey eyes going wide as he stared down the staircase into the bottom floor of the house. 

He bit his lip, wondering if maybe he should go down there to check things out. Even if he did, he was pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to do much about the screaming adults. Another part of him wondered if maybe he could go find Carl or something just to distract himself or just to talk. But he really didn't want to risk being seen by the adults. Plus, he had no idea where Carl even was. Probably his tent, maybe somewhere else. Either way, Teddy didn't know. 

He wasn't really in the mood for talking either, to be honest.

So he got back up, the crutches causing him to wobble slightly, and slowly made his way back toward the deceased Greene's room. He can feel his throat begin to close up as he took his first step inside, as well as the tears already starting to well up in his eyes. So he shut the door with a crutch, not caring about how loud it may or may not be, collapsing onto the bed the moment he gets close enough to do so -- and trying to ignore the shouting as the tears start spilling from his eyes.

He just wanted to go home.

* * *

_ He's never been away from Harry for this long. _

_ The longest it's ever been was a week or two, but that was it. Never even a month, and never  _ **_ever_ ** _ this long. _

_ How long has it been anyway? _

_ He had only been supposed to be in America for five months.  _

_ It's been longer than that now.  _

_ Six months? Seven maybe?  _

_ He should be home by now. _

_ He wishes he was. _

* * *

He must've fallen asleep because the next thing Teddy knew, he was lying sprawled out on the bed, dried tears stuck to his face as he slowly drifted back into consciousness. Teddy blinked slowly, sitting up and glancing around. He then caught sight of the window as he moved and, through a small hole in the curtains, could see that the sun was almost entirely below the horizon line now, with various shades of oranges, purples, yellows, and blues now coloring the sky. Teddy knew that he would've been admiring it if it weren't for his current state of mind.

It took him another few moments to hear the voices drifting through the thin walls of the house. Filled with tension as they argued in hushed whispers to one another. There's something more in their tone, more than whatever fear, grief, and stress leftover from what went down at the barn. And as Teddy strained his ears, he realized that it was something more... urgent, something more desperate. 

"Rick and Shane - back by now?"

"-Hershel isn't - Beth needs his help-"

"-should give it a little longer - out first thing in the morning if they're not back yet."

He blinked again, rubbing his eyes as he tried to make sense of the chopped voices somewhere in the house.  _ At least they stopped yelling,  _ he thought to himself. He swung his legs back over the side of the bed, ignoring the twinge of pain the movement caused and reached out for his crutches, prepared to make the trek downstairs to find out what had stressed everyone out so much. He had just curled his fingers around the wood of the nearest crutch when the bedroom door creaked open, showing no one else other than a very sullen Carl Grimes, his dad's hat askew on his head, his hair messy and untamed from underneath it, and his face smudged with a mixture of dirt, ash, and tears.

Carl looked over at Teddy, a nervous expression crossing his face as he met Teddy's gaze. "I - um, Maggie said that you were up here," he said after a moment, gnawing on his lip and ducking his head. There's a miserable air surrounding him, and Teddy scoots over to the side, patting a spot on the bed next to him.

"Yeah," Teddy responded, shrugging weakly as Carl took a step inside, closing the door behind him. "What are you doing up here?"

"Oh, um," Carl stammered slightly, scuffing a sneakered foot on the wooden floor, "I just... wanted to get away from everyone else. They're getting really loud." He glanced behind him at the closed door, looking sheepish. "Is that okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," Teddy said, picking at a loose thread in his jeans. The bed dipped beneath him as Carl took a seat, hands clasped in his lap as he jiggled his leg up and down. "What are they yelling about anyway? Did something else happen?" He couldn't help the nervousness seeping into his voice as he said this. 

"Um," Carl started, chancing a look over at the window, which was still open, allowing the voices from outside to filter in, though they had calmed down slightly in the few seconds he's been here. "Hershel - after the whole barn thing - he, uh, left and Beth..." he shook his head, a frown pulling at his lips. "She... um... tried killing herself, and so... my dad and Glenn went out to find her dad, and then my mom left earlier to go find them - because they were taking too long, and Shane went after her, and none of them came back yet - and it's getting dark." He said the last part in a slight rush, avoiding Teddy's gaze as he finished. 

Teddy, however, had stopped listening after hearing about Beth. His heart had seemed to stop at the words, lodging itself in his throat and making it hard for him to breathe. "She-" he shook his head, mouth going dry as he registered Carl's words. "Beth did what?" He tried fitting what Carl said to the happy blonde teenager he'd seen only a day ago, and he just couldn't make any sense of it. Because that couldn't be right. Beth wouldn't... she wouldn't do something like that... would she?

Teddy couldn't believe it. Didn't want to. But deep down, he knew that it was the truth. 

No matter how much he didn't want to believe it -- Carl wasn't lying. It simply wasn't in his nature.

"That's what Maggie and the rest of them are saying." Carl was saying quickly from beside him, "I d-don't really know if it's true or not but - Hey! Where are you going?"

Teddy didn't even spare a glance back at him as he wedged his crutches back under his arm. "To see Beth," he grunted out, making his way to the door in a matter of seconds. With a bit of struggling, he managed to open it, "I'll be back in a bit. Stay here." He called out, slipping through the door without even waiting for Carl's response. Or even stopping to see if Carl had listened to him.

_ I have someone to talk to. _

* * *

Beth was curled up in her bed when he entered her room. Various soft blankets were drawn tightly around her body, almost covering her entire being except for her head, which she had buried into a mountain of pillows with her eyes pulled tightly shut. Her shoulders were shaking rather violently too, Teddy had realized a few seconds after entering the older girl's room, and it only took him a second to understand why. Beth was crying. Something he was pretty sure he had only ever seen the teen do once do in the short amount of time that he's known her. Hushed, broken gasps were escaping from her lips as she trembled and shook on the mattress of her bed.

Teddy frowned, a faint feeling of guilt churning in his stomach as he nudged the door behind him closed with a crutch. It creaked as he did so, and when he turned back to face the bed his friend was curled up on, Beth had opened her eyes, having heard the door being shut. Blue eyes met grey. The two of them simply stared at one another for a few seconds, neither one of them really knowing quite what to say to one another. Hell, was there anything really _ to _ say? What do you say to someone who just tried committing suicide?

Teddy wasn't really all that familiar with the concept of suicide. He knew what it was, of course, but he had never really understood it in the past.  _ Why would someone want to die? _ He remembered thinking a few years back after someone had first explained to him what it was. He remembered asking Harry about it once:  _ why wouldn't someone want to live anymore, Harry?  _ And when he had, he remembered seeing Harry's face twisting into a sad grimace. Something it often did when remembering or thinking of something of his past. Something he did quite often when Teddy was younger.

_ It's complicated, Teddy...  _ had been Harry's response -- quieter than a whisper so Teddy's gran couldn't hear from where she was reading on the couch. S _ ometimes something happens to someone that just makes them not want to go on anymore, something traumatic: maybe they lose someone they love, maybe things just aren't going well for them -- there's a million different reasons, Ted. _ Teddy remembered being horribly confused by this but not asking again, seeing as how sad it made his godfather. But it wasn't until now that he understood what his godfather meant by this. Maybe not fully -- but better than he had before. 

"I heard what happened..." Teddy finally said, breaking the tense silence that had fallen between them. "Is it true?"

Slowly, Beth nodded, sitting up in her bed as she continued to stare at Teddy. "It is." She said in a hoarse voice a few seconds later.

Teddy swallowed, his heart clenching in his chest as Beth confirmed the information he had hoped had been false. "Why?" Teddy asked, his voice becoming so small as he spoke. Though despite his question, a faint voice whispering in the back of his mind told him exactly why she had done it. Exactly why she had attempted to take her own life. 

Beth didn't respond for a long while. "I don't..." she looked down at her lap, hands gripping the blankets surrounding her tightly enough that her knuckles whitened. "Everything it's-" she closed her eyes "-my mom... and Shawn... they - they were my best friends and not only that, but I'm... I'm." her shoulders slumped as she sighed, pale strands of her hair falling in front of her face. "I'm not going to survive in a world like this, Teddy." She sounds so defeated as she said the last bit -- like he had. "People like Maggie and Glenn and Daryl and Rick -- they are the people who can survive. But people like me? I have no chance."

"And what about me, Beth?" Teddy asked her, voice hardening as he spoke. "Where will I end up? I have less of a chance than you do -- have you ever thought about that?" He shook his head, averting his eyes. "And.. and I know how it feels to lose your parents too, you know... I've been an orphan all my life. It's hard... but that doesn't mean it's all over."

"That's different," Beth interjected, shaking her head, "you never knew them. And you've had so long to get used to living without them. But me?" She let out a hollow laugh. "You're strong, Teddy - more than I ever could have been. I'd never be able to handle losing both my parents, my family, my  _ leg.  _ Let's face it, in a few months, I'm probably going to be dead. So why not just do it on my own terms? It's much better than being ripped apart." 

A wave of unexpected anger flared up inside him. "So what? You're just going to give up then?" He snapped, his voice closer to a hiss. Beth stared at him with wide, confused eyes, but that didn't deter him as he plowed on. "Are you not even going to try?! Are.. are you just going to leave the rest of your family here because you're  _ scared?!" _

"Teddy..." Beth tried, her voice beginning to wobble. "Please-"

"NO! Don't try and change my mind!" He's yelling now, and if his abilities were working, he had no doubt that his hair would be bright red as of now. "Don't you understand, Beth? You don't  _ get  _ to give up just like that! You-" he broke off, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the anger now violently coursing through him. "You... you don't get to  _ leave _ just because you think everything is too  _ hard! _ You just lost your mother and brother. I get that, really! But I lost my parents and my grandmother-" his voice cracked at the mention of his gran, but he plowed on through it without a moments hesitation, "I lost my entire fucking family, and I probably won't ever see them  _ again. _ Won't ever find out what happened to them, if they die or not! I lost just as much, if not more than you have, AND YOU DON'T SEE ME TRYING TO KILL MYSELF BECAUSE OF IT!"

The louder he got, the more he could feel the magic thrumming in his veins. Roaring and churning inside him and just begging to be released, and if he had gone on for a moment longer, he had no doubt it would have done exactly that and caused one hell of a mess. Teddy didn't even notice himself shaking until Beth got out of her bed, untangling herself from all the blankets and pillows, and wrapping him up into a hesitant hug. As if unsure of how he might react. 

She rested her chin atop his head, and that was all it took for Teddy to break. He crumpled - falling into her arms and holding onto her shirt so tightly his knuckles whitened. He buried his face into her neck, a series of fresh sobs wracking his body. "I-I... I'm so sorry, I... I didn't... I don't-" he babbled incoherently into her shirt, too shaken to speak clearly, a mixture of grief and guilt now flowing through him. 

"You're m-my friend, Beth-" he finally managed to gasp out through his tears, "a-and I... I can't l-lose you t-too!" He looked up at her through watery eyes, guilt plaguing him. "Please d-don't leave m-me too..." 

Beth carefully maneuvered the two of them onto the floor, and when he looked up, he realized that she was now crying too. Tears of her own were now streaming down her face at a rapid pace, and she trembled against him, arms tightening around him. She buried her face into his hair, a choked out sob escaping from her lips. Both of them were crying now. Both of them shaking like leaves as the emotions caused by the past two-ish months events finally broke through.

And through that flow of tears, Teddy heard a soft whisper escape her lips, one he would have missed if he hadn't had such expert hearing.

_ "I won't." _

* * *

It doesn't take long at all for someone to come check on them. 

Maggie and Glenn, the both of them looking unsure and worried, had poked their heads through the door to ask them if something was wrong. Although, upon seeing Teddy and Beth curled up on the floor, Maggie's face had filled with a mix of understanding and relief, while Glenn had simply left -- probably feeling as if he were intruding on something. Maggie had only stayed a little while longer to force the two of them off the wood floor and onto the bed and tell them that dinner would be in ten or so minutes before leaving the room, shutting the door quietly behind her as she left.

Beth and Teddy spent the next minute or two in silence. Then, Beth had gotten up, walking over to her dresser and, after a brief pause, took a book from one of the drawers. She then returned to the bed, wrapping the blankets around the both of them once more before holding the book up, a weak smile on her face as she spoke. "We haven't read in a while -- don't think we ever finished this one." 

It was Old Yeller. The book that he and Beth had been reading before this new group had come to the barn. Funny, that felt like a lifetime ago at this point. Though he knew it had only been a couple of days. It was kind of hard to believe that so much had happened in the time period of a few days -- much less three (two?) months! 

Heck, he hadn't even known Beth existed until a month or two ago. Which honestly felt super weird to think about. It seemed as though he had known her for so much longer.

Teddy reached out, taking the book into his hands. The cover was as worn and as torn as it had been last time he had laid eyes on it. Its edges yellowed and crinkled. His fingers run over the edge of the book cover, biting his lip. He flipped through the pages, finding their stopping point pretty quickly. "Want me to read this time?" He asked Beth, his voice still hoarse from crying.

Teddy's an okay reader - of course, he's not nearly as good as Aunt Hermione was. Or Harry and Beth for that matter, but he wasn't horrible. Still, Beth ended up nodding, a faint smile spreading across her pale, freckled face, and Teddy adjusted the position in which he sat, placing the book on his lap and leaning on Beth as he began to read. In less than a minute, the two of them fell into a peaceful calm, the only sound being Teddy's quiet reading and the sound of the people wandering around and talking below. 

Eventually, Teddy was forced to stop when a knock sounded on the door, causing the two of them to look up. Maggie poked her head in, "time for dinner. You two comin' or...?" She avoided her sister's eyes as she spoke, and as Teddy looked between the two sisters, he could tell that something happened between the two of them while he'd been asleep. And he had a pretty good idea of what it was. It didn't really take a lot of guessing...

"We'll be down in a bit," Teddy said in a hoarse whisper, squeezing Beth's hand and giving Maggie a small smile, "thank you, Maggie."

Maggie looked at Beth, who promptly refused to meet her elder sister's gaze. A sad expression crossed Maggie's face, but she nodded slowly, taking a step back and pulling the door shut with a loud creaking noise. Teddy listened carefully as her footsteps echoed down the hall, heading downstairs where everyone else was situated. 

"She's mad at me," Beth said quietly, staring at the door where Maggie had been moments before, "she thinks I'm being selfish." She turned her head to look at him, her expression unimaginably sad. 

"You aren't being selfish," Teddy assured her, sending her the biggest smile he could muster, which, granted, wasn't that large, "she's... she's probably just scared. People say and do a lot of things that they don't mean when they're scared."  _ Like I did,  _ his mind murmured, and Teddy tried to push down the churning guilt that coursed through him at the thought.

Beth looked at him for a long moment before asking: "Are you sure that you're ten?"

Teddy's brows furrowed in confusion at the question. "Yes, I am. I turned ten in April, literally like - a month before all of this started!" 

"Okay, okay! I believe you," Beth said quickly, giving him a reassuring grin. "You're just much more mature than most ten-year-olds I've seen."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Teddy questioned.

"Nothing bad," Beth said, ruffling his hair, "though I suppose your size makes up for that maturity." 

"Are you calling me tiny?!" Teddy asked, narrowing his eyes. Beth laughed at his outrage, and the sound caused an unexpected warmth to surge up inside him. 

"Of course not," She teased, an amused smile spreading across her face. "Doesn't mean you aren't, though."

Teddy may or may not have thrown one of the many pillows surrounding them at her in response.

* * *

Somehow, Teddy managed to convince Beth to head downstairs for dinner with everyone else, something he honestly didn't expect to be able to do. If anything, he would have believed that Beth would not be willing to set foot anywhere outside her room. Especially with everything that's happened during the past day: the barn shootout, the funerals, Hershel disappearing...

God, did all of that really happen within a day?

Either way -- it's only after he and Beth sit down at the dinner table that Teddy realized that maybe coming down there wasn't such a good idea after all.

The atmosphere of the entire room was tense and unhappy -- people were glancing at one another uncertainly, a lot of them looking to Carl, who ended up sitting on Teddy's other side next to two empty plates, most likely set for his parents. Carl himself has a gloomy look to him, and he kept stabbing at his food and taking the occasional bite. The only reason that he actually managed to eat his entire plate was because, at one point, Patricia got tired of him not eating anything and scolded the older boy for playing with his food.

Beth ended up on his other side, her head down as she blatantly refused to meet anyone's gaze, even Maggie's, who kept trying to catch her eye with little success. Teddy soon found himself doing the same, not wanting to see the pitying looks that were aimed their way. He couldn't see Carol or Daryl at the table, so he could only assume that the two of them were somewhere else. Not that he could blame either of them, especially Carol. Nobody would be willing to go out and about and socialize after the death of their child. As for Daryl... Well, from what Teddy heard, the archer had dedicated a lot of his time into looking for Sophia, so her death must have hit him pretty hard too.

Teddy dished out a spoonful of peas, sending Beth a half-hearted glare when she ended up dumping even more onto his plate a few seconds later. Beth responded by giving him a quick grin -- albeit a strained one -- and returning to her own meal, which consisted of two chicken legs, some peas of her own, mashed potatoes, and tomato soup. A part of Teddy wondered if she actually was going to eat all of it. He glanced at his own plate, which held pretty much the same thing, only with three instead of two chicken legs and a piece of bread instead of tomato soup. He hated pretty much anything to do with tomatoes, but it's not like he really has the time to be picky about it.

Teddy glanced up from his own plate of food, turning his head to look at Carl, who had returned to pushing his meal around the plate much to Patrica's apparent dismay. The older boy had a frown on his face and kept looking up at the window and door every few seconds as if expecting his parents and godfather to appear out of nowhere, which might as well be what Carl was doing. Teddy wished that he could offer some sort of way to comfort him as Carl had down with him earlier that day, but he couldn't figure out how to do that. It's not like if he told Carl that his parents were alright that it would be the truth. For all they knew, all three of them were dead.

It was a horrible thought, but with the current state of the world as of now, it could very well turn out to be the truth. They would just have to wait and see.

He only hoped that Carl was a patient person. They didn't need anyone else going out there to try and find them. 

Carl looked up suddenly, bright blue eyes locking with Teddy's own. A flush crept up onto Teddy's face, but he gave Carl a sad smile, which the other boy returned after one or two seconds before going back to stabbing at his food. Seconds later, Patricia let out an annoyed sigh, reaching out and grabbing Carl's hand and said, "stop playing with your food!" And while this only made Carl look even sadder, he complied, scooping up a couple peas and hesitantly putting them into his mouth. This seemed to satisfy Patrica, for she sat back down, returning to her own food. 

Wow, this was really turning out to be one of the saddest dinners Teddy's ever been to. 

At least the food was good. 

Teddy couldn't help the frown that appeared on his face at that. He literally had just found out his grandmother was dead, and he was thinking about  _ food _ of all things?! Merlin, he really was a horrible grandson. Teddy hadn't deserved his gran whatsoever. 

His eyes began to burn with tears, and Teddy took in a shaky breath, blinking rapidly and reaching up a hand to wipe the upcoming tears from his face. His palm came away wet, as expected, but the tears still remained in the corner of his eyes, blurring his vision no matter how hard he tried to get rid of them. 

Before he could register what he was doing, Teddy was reaching for his crutches, pushing away the dinner plate, and pulling himself up. The table fell silent, and he could feel the way their stares were burning into his back as he started hobbling away from the table and toward the door. He heard Maggie call out after a few seconds, but Teddy was unable to make any sense of her words. 

He just needed to get out of here. 

He couldn't stand being in there for another second. 

It was too suffocating.

He just-

Teddy swallowed, trying to calm his breathing. 

He just-

"Teddy?" Maggie called out softly, worry coating her voice -- it probably wasn't the first time.

"I... I need some fresh air," he stammered out in response, refusing to look at anyone else as he slipped out of the dining room. He doesn't hear anyone going off after him, which surprised him slightly because he would have expected that to be the first thing Maggie or Beth would do.

The moment he managed to get the door open, Teddy was greeted by a cold gust of wind. The wooden porch creaked under his crutches as he made his way toward one of the porch chairs, practically collapsing in it once he reached it. Teddy let the crutches fall to the ground, his hands moving to his face as the tears finally begin to fall. Trickling down his face slowly at first before coming down like rain in a storm.

After a few seconds, a choked sob escaped from Teddy's lips, and he whimpered, pulling his leg and stump up onto the chair, hugging his remaining limb to his chest while his stump remained curled up beneath him. He let his forehead rest against his knee, allowing his tears to soak into the rough fabric of his pants. They blurred his vision, and Teddy closed his eyes, another sob escaping from him.

He really doesn't know how long he sat there for, but at one point, the sound of footsteps caught his attention, and Teddy looked up just as a very disgruntled looking Daryl Dixon made his way up the steps of the porch. The archer paused upon spotting Teddy, eyes narrowing when he spotted the tears trailing down his cheeks.

"The fuck's wrong with you?" The archer paused, eyes suddenly going wide. "Shit. Don't answer that, forgot abou' earlier." 

Teddy reached up a hand, wiping at the tears trailing down his face. "It's... it's okay." He mumbled, keeping his eyes pinned on his lap. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doin' here?" Daryl shot back, his eyes narrowing into tiny slits. "Y'should head back inside. It's dangerous out here."

Teddy scowled at his words. "I don't  _ want  _ to go back inside." He just couldn't. It was way too suffocating in there. It was the reason he had even come out here in the first place, simply because he didn't want to be in there for a second longer. 

"That's not up to you. We already lost one kid. We ain't gonna lose another just because you want to be a brat." Daryl snapped, reaching for his arm as if about to grab him, but Teddy jerked away. 

"Don't touch me!" He cried out, shoving the man's hand away. Daryl flinched back, taking his hand away and looking as if he'd just been slapped. Teddy could have sworn he had seen a flash of something in his eyes -- grief, pain, maybe guilt -- he doesn't know. It's gone in seconds, though, making Teddy unable to figure out what it was. 

Still, it doesn't stop him from feeling guilty about it. "I... I'm sorry... I just..." He looked down at his hands, flattening his palms against his pants. "I can't go back in there," he admitted softly, "Everyone's just so tense, and they keep giving me and Carl and Beth these looks, and I hate it!"

Daryl nodded, sparing a quick glance over to the door. After a moment, he sat down on the porch chair beside Teddy, twitching uncomfortably as he did so. "I lost my mother when I was around your age." He said after a few seconds. "Was a bit younger, really. Seven." He looked away as Teddy gave him a curious look. "Know it ain't the same thing, but..." he shrugged, trailing off.

"Yeah..." Teddy didn't really know why Daryl was telling him this. Was it to make him feel better? If so, he was grateful. Swallowing down the lump in his throat, Teddy found himself asking: "Is Carol okay?" Daryl flinched again, a scowl covering his face. "Sorry... that was a stupid question."

Daryl grunted, taking another look back at the door. "Should head back inside... it's gettin' cold." 

Teddy shrugged, letting a sheepish smile cross over his face. "I lived in England. I've had so much worse than this."

Daryl looked a little amused by this, and he raised a brow. "Can't stay out here forever." He said, crossing his arms. 

"I know." Teddy said with a sigh, rubbing at his arms. "Do... do you think I'll be allowed to stay in one of the tents tonight? I don't think I can sleep in that room any longer." He knew how much it had hurt Hershel to let Teddy sleep in that room. He didn't want to cause any more heartache than he already had. 

"Hell if I know, have to ask people yourself. Could probably spend the night with Carl or somethin." Daryl said curtly. Teddy didn't really know why he asked.

"Maybe..."

The two of them fell into yet another silence. Teddy started picking at a loose thread in his sweater, puffing out his cheeks as he twirls the strand around his finger. Suddenly, he frowned, tilting his head to the side. What was that sound? He straightened up, ignoring the odd look Daryl gave him as he tried to listen. It was a low rumbly sound, accompanied by the crunch of tires on gravel. He looked at Daryl.

"Do you hear that?"

Daryl stared at him, eyebrows furrowing. "Hear what?"

Teddy reached for his crutches, somehow managing to wedge them under his arms. He heard Daryl get up behind him, but Teddy paid it no mind as he struggled to get down the steps of the porch.

"Kid? The fuck are you doing?" 

Daryl got up behind him, probably about to say something else, but then Teddy pointed toward something in the distance.

"Fuck..." Daryl muttered. 

In the far distance, partially obscured by the shadows of the night, is a car, and it's heading right toward the Greene Family Farm. 


End file.
